


Once More To Part From You

by MercuryGray



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Backstory, Drama, F/M, Family Drama, Historical Accuracy, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-04-19 15:55:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4752218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There had not always been an occupying army in Setauket, or a war to keep young men away from their homes. There had been a time before all of that when young people had dreamed, and planned, and built up future lives. But every soldier must see battles, and every sailor must, at some point, go to sea, though that doesn't mean the one he leaves behind hates it any less. One woman in Setauket is waiting for her sailor to come home. Extracanonical to Season One.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caleb's been away from home a long time, and he wonders -- does anyone at home miss him?

It wasn’t every day that your childhood friend surprised you with a gun to your head, but Abraham Woodhull was trying very, very hard to recover from it.

 

He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting when he’d rowed ashore with his cargo of cabbages, but it certainly hadn’t been Caleb Brewster. The whaler was known to have taken up rank with the Continental Army, but perhaps that hadn’t worked out, if he was back here, smuggling to York City.

 

Abe wasn’t going to question his friend’s sudden reappearance. It was better that way. And, more to the point, he hadn’t really had time, in between all the questions Caleb was asking about this or that from home. “Come on, Abe, I’ve been gone nearly a year -- and almost two before that, you remember. I want news from home!”

 

Abe frowned and hung his head, searching for something to say. “I don’t know what to tell you about! You seem to know a great deal already.”

 

“Well, one hears things, you know, here and there, but it’s ...never about people you care about.” Caleb shrugged a little bit, but his nonchalance was a little studied, something not quite right about his general interest.

 

Abe looked at his friend a moment, and, realizing something, sighed and chuckled. “Oh, I see now what this is. No, Caleb. I won’t.”

 

Away went the studied disinterest, replaced instead by rabid demand for news. “You go by her father’s farm all the time, Abe! You must know something.”

 

“No,” Abe repeated strongly. “No, I’m not putting my hand near that fire.”

 

“Why not?” Caleb practically begged.

 

“Because I like my limbs where they’re attached,” the magistrate’s son said simply. “And I know you like your balls where they are, too. No, I’ll tell you something and you’ll want more, so you’ll go to see her, and her father will either kill you where you stand, which, admittedly, is bad for you, or turn you over to the authorities, which is bad for you and for the good people of York city who so depend on you.” He gestured to the collection of oddiments on the shore near Caleb’s whaleboat, the fruits of the smuggler’s trade.

 

“Abe, I’m already dying out here. If the bloodybacks don’t shoot me today, they may shoot me tomorrow. Can’t you at least grant a dying man a wish for news of his sweetheart?” He raised his eyebrows and smiled as sweetly as his beard and general demeanor would allow, a comical sight by anyone’s standards.

 

Abraham Woodhull considered a minute and sighed again, defeated. “She’s well,” he said resignedly.

 

Caleb inched closer -- if he’d been sitting in a chair, he would have pulled it in to listen intently. “How well? How did she look when you last saw her? And where?”

 

Another roll of the eyes. It was like feeding a starving man breadcrumbs. “Last week. She was out with her father, picking out cloth for a new dress.”

 

A frown for a mention of her father, and a wistful look for the thought of a new dress for the beloved. “What color?” Caleb was practically salivating at all this new intelligence, food for an active imagination forced to stagnate far away from the object of his affection.

 

Abe didn’t remember what color. “Blue, I think,” he said, squinting as though he were trying to see into a particularly cloudy window.

 

Caleb closed his eyes in ecstasy and smiled in private delight. “Blue,” he repeated, rolling the image over in his mind’s eye. “She looks like an angel in blue. I’d dress her in indigo every day of the week if I could, with a white cap and one of those little lace…” he gestured vaguely in the direction of his throat, and Abe amused himself for a minute with the thought of a -- what did Mary call those delicate lace bits -- a _fichu_ , that was the word, around Caleb’s unshaven throat. “What kind of blue?” the former whaler asked suddenly, his eyes open again.

 

“Oceans were made of the color,” Abe improvised, only to see the rapture return to his friend’s face as his eyelids descended again, caught back to his own little daydream.

 

“Oh, Merry,” Caleb murmured. “Did she say anything?” he asked again, eyes wide again. “Did she look well?”

 

Abe shrugged. “She looked...like she always does. Happy to see me, I think -- she bid me good day, when she saw me, and asked her father do the same, and we talked a little while of the crop, and...current events.” A lie, that last one. it had been a very short conversation, and if he was being honest, he couldn't remember the content exactly.

 

“Did she mention me?”

 

“Mr. Hayman was always close to hand, Caleb,” Abe chided him, his voice a little harsh. His friend’s face fell with the reminder of the stumbling block posed by the beloved’s father. “But I thought she wanted to,” he added, trying to salve the wound a little. And there was some truth in it. She had stood on the edge of their conversation, watching the two of them as though she were …waiting for something, but the moment never came, and she’d left with a little nod and a goodbye.

 

“Is she courting anyone?”

 

“Caleb…” Abe warned.

 

“Mother of God, Abe, you’d make a man starve out here!” his friend exploded.

 

“No!” his friend quickly assured him, hands up in the universal sign for cease-fire. “Not that I know, anyway. You know what her father’s like, Caleb -- and he’s not changed a bit since you left.”

 

“Well, at least that’s something,” he consoled himself, sitting back on the log again. “Does her garden still lie near the woods?” he asked, his gaze suddenly very, very distant.

 

“Caleb, if you’re thinking of…”

 

“It’s only thinking, man!” Caleb replied sharply.

 

 _But it’s never only thinking with you_ , _Caleb,_ Abe thought to himself, taking another draw of his beer. _Easy money says that the next time the tide's right you're heading for Conscience Bay and the Hayman house._ It would be of little use trying to disuade him -- when Caleb Brewster thought of a thing then sure as there were oars to oarlocks he would try to see it done. And he had been trying to win Merry Hayman for as long as Abe could remember. 

Trying to change the subject, Abe instead returned to his beer, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe something. "So, what's Greenland like?" he asked, hoping (against hope) that his old's friend's taste for adventure would, at least temporarily, overpower his particular interest in Setauket's young ladies. And after that, they spoke no more on the subject.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I knew from the moment he came onscreen that I was going to have to do something about Caleb Brewster. After two rewatches of season one and a great deal of research, I think I've got him right where I want him -- firmly in the arms of the girl he left behind. (I maintain that all that boasting about his well-read woman in New Haven and his tavern wenches in Elizabethtown is a ruse. And the historic Caleb Brewster did settle down after the war with a girl named Annie Lewis of Fairfield, Connecticut.) This is a new fandom (and a new historical period!) for me, so the going is a little slow, but I'm pleased with the results so far. I've revised the first few chapters a little since posting them on Tumblr, and I hope you all enjoy it!
> 
> The title comes from a traditional song, Swansea Town, which I thought was particularly appropriate.
> 
> Oh, farewell to you my Nancy, ten thousand times adieu;  
> I'm bound to cross the ocean, girl, once more to part from you.  
> Once more to part from you, fine girl, you're the girl that I adore.  
> But still I live in hopes to see old Swansea town once more.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If he can sneak ashore to gather intelligence for Washington, what's to stop Caleb Brewster from taking the lay of the land of other, less strategic places -- farmsteads, perhaps?

The Hayman farmhouse, built on the top of a little rolling hill surrounded by farm fields, stood solidly against a woodlot like a little castle. Between the woods and the house stood a kitchen garden, fenced by neatly split posts to keep any of the livestock from browsing. It was, to Caleb’s eyes, the best house in the world, after his uncle’s, of course, not only because this was the house that held what he counted dear, but because the woodlot beyond provided the perfect place for secret meetings. And if anyone knew about the best places for secret meetings (particularly if they were with girls) you could bet that Caleb Brewster would know them well.

 

It was easy enough to jump into a whaleboat in the dead of night and put ashore at one of the inlets near Setauket, and then, after walking a ways, to steal into the woodlot under the diminishing cover of darkness, creeping close to the line of the kitchen garden fence and then settling down to wait for the house to wake. Caleb watched, anxious, as the flickering light of a candle moved from the windows of the upper story to the ground floor, where it lingered until smoke began rising from the kitchen chimney.  _If only all intelligence work were so easy_ , he mused to himself.

 

His stomach rumbled at the thought of the breakfast being prepared. It was well known in Setauket that Merriment Hayman kept her family well-fed -- it was one of the reasons (rumor maintained) that her father was so keen to keep her at home. And there was the invalid mother to consider -- another reason why Merry was practically running the house on her own. Caleb’s mind turned back to the dream of the new blue dress and the lace cap and all the bits and bobs to go with it, crowning Merry a vision of loveliness carrying a heaping platter of freshly roasted meat to a pristine table where it was he, and not her father, who sat at the head.

 

The vision set the platter down, and Caleb had a sudden mind that the rest of the imaginary dinner could wait. He was mentally preparing himself for what the vision would feel like nestled in his lap while he undid all those long, lovely laces from the front of her bodice and slid a hand inside the placket of her skirt along the firm expanse of thigh.

 

Suddenly, the back door opened, and Caleb sat up in the bracken to compose himself as the source of the vision herself, clad in a more modest and maidenly brown dress that had seen a good deal of wear, came outside with a bucket of yesterday’s ashes, tipping them into one of the planting beds, standing for a moment to survey the garden. Caleb felt his blood leap up. _Oh, Merry_. How long had it been since he’d seen her? Held her?

 

 _Oh, the Boston girls will do for pearls_   
_and the New York girls for rubies_   
_But if you want fire that’s not for hire_   
_You’ll want Long Island beauties._

 

Those were the kind of songs that men who had been at sea too long tended to sing, and Caleb would always sing the loudest. A sailor can claim that he has a friend in every port, but there was something special to be said for the girl at home, too. And in his mind, no one could match Long Island girls -- especially this one.

 

He cupped a hand around his mouth and made a owlish noise in the direction of the house and Merry. She looked up, her eyes scanning the tree tops and, seeing no sign of the owl, frowning and heading back inside. Caleb mirrored her frown and settled back into the woods. A quick tumble before breakfast seemed out of the question. Guess I’ll just have to wait.

 

Patience had never really been Caleb Brewster’s strong suit. It was, of his many personal qualities, the one that hindered him most in his chosen profession. Any sailor needs patience -- for the wind to freshen, for the tide to change, for the fish to school. But a whaler -- now, there was a man who needed lessons from Job. A harpoon set too soon, an oar laid down too quickly and you were likely to find yourself in a stove whaleboat with no way back to the ship and no carcass to show for a day’s hunt.

 

But he was learning. Slowly and surely he was learning to be patient. And they were lessons that stood him well on missions like this one, while he watched the smoke rise and the smell of baking bannock waft out of the kitchen window. _Merriment Hayman, are you trying to provoke me?_ Caleb tried not to think about the last time he’d eaten food that had been prepared on an honest-to-goodness hearth and fixed his eyes, instead, on the kitchen door.

 

His Merry was a creature of habit -- breakfast first, then work in the garden. He’d catch her then. It was only a matter of time. _And I can wait._

 

In the windows to the kitchen he could catch glimpses of the household -- Merry, in her white cap, and her father in his shirtsleeves. Another woman in black  -- that would be Mrs. Fielding, her mother’s companion. Mrs. Hayman had been, for many years, confined to bed, unable to run the household the way it should be run. Mrs. Fielding had the care of Mrs. Hayman, and Merry had the care of practically everything else. Including, of course, the kitchen garden, which today, it looked like, was in sore need of weeding.

 

Breakfast finished, the mistress of the house stepped outside with her washwater and slung it into one of the beds a little ways from the door. She tipped the basin against the side of the house to drip dry, wiped her hands on her apron and set to the nearest bed with resignation.

 

Caleb cupped his hand around his mouth a second time and gave another owlish hoot, softer and lower this time, a baby bird’s sound. Merry turned, scanning the woods again over her shoulder. She loved birds of all kinds, but owls especially -- she’d come looking for it, he had no fear. He tried a third time, and she rose from her knees, walking, slowly and deliberately, over to the woods, scanning the trees and then, ducking under the fence, coming deeper into the woodlot.

 

Caleb waited until she was just within reach of his little hideaway before stretching his foot out to clip her around the ankles, tripping her up and sending her headlong into the leaves, right beside him.

 

Another woman might have screamed in surprise, but Merry had been taught better. She fell with only the slightest of yelps, the same noise one might give for tripping over a poorly placed log.

 

Eyes adjusting to the change in landscape, her gaze found him under the bushes and her eyes went wide.

 

“Hello, Merry,” Caleb said with a smile, hoping she’d be pleased. .

 

But Merriment Hayman, it seemed, had other ideas. Her surprise gone, her look turned, not to one of loving sympathy, but near-murderous annoyance, and the hands which Caleb had hoped so fondly would embrace him and caress him (and, perhaps if he was very, very good, relieve some of his body’s other cares) firmly formed themselves into fists and set to pounding some sense into her long-absent lover, rolling him over onto his back to give her a little more leverage “What gives you the right, you...you…”

 

“Merry -- Merry! -- easy now!” Caleb tried to hold his arms up to shield himself, but she was quicker and surer with her hits than some men -- a lifetime spent pummeling bread dough put into practice. “I’ve only spent half the night here and my bones ache…”

 

“Then it serves you right!” the young woman hissed, fists still intent on flattening him.

 

“All right, all right. I apologize, now will ye stop pummeling me to pieces for a minute and let me kiss you?” the whaler begged, with a quick glance of his own back towards the house, wondering if anyone had heard her racket.

 

The blows stopped, at least for a moment, and the dark, curly head, its cap long since lost to the leaves, rose up imperiously to survey her prisoner. “I’m not in the habit of letting strange men kiss me in the woods,” she declared, her eyes daring him to argue.

 

Caleb frowned. “Well, it’s not as if I could come up to the house.”

 

“And have you got any grand plans for when my father comes and finds you here?”

 

“Seeing as how I wasn’t planning on getting caught, no, I haven’t,” Caleb replied tartly. “Mmm,” he said, realizing, as the air between them calmed, that she was practically astride him and disheveled to boot. “That’s nice.” Merry looked down, and, scandalized, hitched her leg back over Caleb’s hips, kneeling in the leaves and arranging her skirts  so she could tame a little bit of her hair back into its pins and recover a bit of dignity.

 

“You’ve a fine way of showing you care, Caleb,” she said finally, her eyes directly decidedly away from him.

 

“And you’ve a fine way, too, you know,” Caleb countered. “A man’ll be black and blue ‘til Judgement Day the way you hit.” He surveyed the back of her neck and admired a wispy curl at the base of her neck. He picked himself up and knelt behind her. “Have I ever told you,” he whispered, drawing a finger down her hair, “how your hair does this little curl ...right here?” His finger dragged along the bare base of her neck, and she shivered, leaning away from his touch.

 

“Caleb, please, not --” She made the mistake of looking over her shoulder at him, and he took his chance to finally steal the kiss he’d been meaning to take all morning. That she readily leaned into, turning just enough for Caleb to seize her around the waist and pull her in close to better appreciate the fine, fine woman underneath the patched-over, secondhand brown gown. “Oh, God,” she murmured.

 

“Let’s leave God out of this for just the moment,” Caleb said reasonably, kissing her again until she had lost a good deal of her prickliness and had turned back into the softer, pliant nymph that had so occupied his thoughts since he’d gotten his intelligence from Abe. “Now let me have a look at you.”

 

She knelt back again and picked a stray leaf off of her bodice, straightening and tucking until she was satisfied enough to look him back in the eye, waiting for his verdict. “Well?” she asked, expectant and yet still hesitant.

 

“Prettiest girl on Long Island,” Caleb declared. “Probably the prettiest girl in New York State,” he added, for good measure, letting her blush for a moment. “And there’s no one else courting you?”

 

For a moment she looked ashamed. “You know my father’s got his expectations, Caleb.”

 

“Higher than the 140th lay of a boat with a good captain?” Caleb reminded angrily. “I had a place! I had my trade!”

 

“It was going to be two years, Caleb! And only a share of what you might catch,” Merry reminded him. “And now you’re...hiding in woodpiles with a price on your head.”

 

“I’ll have you know I’m a lieutenant now,” he bristled.

 

“And what’s the money in that, pray tell?” Merry asked, all practicality.   _Nowhere,_ Caleb admitted silently. That much could not be denied -- his prospects now were worse than when he’d asked Amos Hayman for his daughter’s hand the last time. A blacksmith on a whaling ship could earn good money, if the ship did well on its voyage. But a Lieutenant in an army that had a hard time paying and provisioning its men was a far, far bleaker prospect. “You’ve a rip in your coat,” she observed, picking at a split seam with a fond little smile.

 

“That’s what I get for wrestling with the devil in petticoats here,” he groused, frowning really only for effect. If he knew her right (and he was sure he did) any show of poverty would move her to pity, and Merry’s pity was the only kind Caleb could take with an easy stomach. Sure enough, she moved herself a little closer, smiling like she meant to tempt him with a special treat.

 

“I bought cloth for a new dress the other day,” she confided. “Blue. You always liked me in blue.”

 

The vision came back behind his eyes with tempting smiles and a crooked finger. _God in heaven, yes, I do_. “Not that I’ll see you in it,” he replied, still playing the part of the sulking lover.

 

“Maybe so,” she admitted, leaning closer. “But I’m sure you’ll do a fine job dreaming me out of it.” Caleb lost all the pretense of sulking and stared at her, too surprised to even laugh. Merry looked absurdly pleased with herself. “Since I’m sure there aren’t any other girls to charm wherever you’re hiding.”

 

“Wicked girl!” he declared, his smile wide and unashamed, surprised that she’d say such a thing and a little aroused at the thought that she knew men did such things. “I ought to lay you over my knee.”

 

But the promise of the tumble that would ensue from such an enterprise (and, hopefully, a bit of raised skirt and all the delights underneath it) was not to be. There was another figure in the kitchenyard, and he had noticed that something was missing.

 

“Merry! Merriment!” Amos Hayman, hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun, was out in the kitchen yard, looking for his absent daughter.

 

“Coming, Papa!” Merry called loudly over her shoulder.

 

“Later?” Caleb asked, his voice hushed and strained.

 

She shook her head. “No. Tomorrow, maybe, but not today.” Clutching at her cap, she sprang to her feet and hurried out of the woods, picking leaves off her skirt as she went. “Sorry, Papa. I thought I heard an owl,” she explained sweetly, making her way back through the fence and towards the house.

 

“You want to be careful what you go chasing, Merriment,” her father chided from his place in the yard. “There’s talk of rebels hereabouts. Wouldn’t want my darling girl to come to harm.”

 

“Of course, Papa,” he heard her promise. It was too much to expect that she’d look back at him.

 

Caleb leaned back into the leaves, consoling himself with the daydream, newly minted at Merry’s suggestion, of dreaming her out of her new dress, humming to himself for a while.

 

_Oh, the captain’s daughter’s short and trim,_

_and the preacher’s girl’s a charmer_

_But if you want a missy who’s fond of kissing_  
  
_Try the daughter of a farmer!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should give credit where credit is due -- the song Caleb sings to himself in this chapter is not from a traditional source, but is adapted from one Gurney Halleck, a character in Frank Herbert's Dune. But I think it fit rather well, don't you?
> 
> We know from historical records that Caleb Brewster shipped on a whaler at the age of 19, and that by the time of events in the story he should be around 31. We also know that after the war he settled down to become a blacksmith in Fairfield with the lovely Annie Lewis. I'm playing with the idea that at this point in his life, he's been on several whaling voyages to the Greenland whalegrounds, most of which, in this period, probably would not have been more than a year or two in length. (The round-the-horn, Pacific whalefishery trips of three or four years don't really start until the 19th century.)  
> As a greenhorn on his first voyage, he wouldn't have seen very much profit; Ishmael, the narrator of Moby Dick, is given the 275th lay, or share, of the profits of the boat as an unknown and inexperienced deckhand, whereas a 'trained' member of the crew -- the mates, the harpooners, the blacksmith or cooper -- would receive a higher share. As Caleb is discussing 'more lucre than you've ever seen' with Abe, I maintain he's probably gotten himself some kind of trade, like being a blacksmith, and has now done this several times. All of which would have kept him far away from home, and made his prospects as a husband (in a community like Setauket unused to whaling) very dim indeed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the waiting that's the hardest, and Merry Hayman is still waiting, without another sign for her steer by. But he's a clever man, her sailor. He'll think of something soon.

Merriment Hayman was trying her hardest, but the temptation was difficult to resist. For the fourteenth time that morning, she glanced out the kitchen window, searching the woodlot beyond the garden for a sign -- any sign -- that Caleb had been by.

 

She’d asked for tomorrow, and he hadn’t come. One day turned into a week, one week to two. _He’s a busy man, Merry. He must have other things to occupy him. Important things. Patriot things_.

 

 _ **Rebel** things_, her mind corrected. If she wasn’t careful with her words there might be far, far worse punishments than an a few strokes of the birch. Her father was not by any means a political man, but his was the side of law and order and the status quo, and young men brandishing torches and reading speeches about things they didn’t understand (his words) were quite beyond the pale for him. That alone had spelled doom to Caleb’s suit, but that was not his only problem. She could not have changed his politics if she’d wanted to, but there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to be done about his profession.

 

“A whaler?” She remembered her father’s voice as though it were only yesterday. “You expect to marry my daughter, sir, on a promise of profit? And a lean promise of profit at that!”

 

But Caleb had been right -- it had been a good chance. He’d come back two years later from the coasts of Greenland  a well-off man, stronger and wider at the shoulders from hammering out new harpoons and barrel-rims and  (God love him) with a beard that made him look practically primeval. (She hated to admit it, but unfashionable or not, she loved the beard, an affectation that he’d adopted after his first voyage. Helped keep out the cold in Greenland, he said.) And no sooner had he come home then he’d run off again and joined...what was it now? The New York Regiment of Foot? Or something like that.

 

Well, if Amos Hayman hadn’t liked him before, he certainly didn’t like him now. And if Caleb Brewster, bravest of the brave young beaux of Setauket, had been beaten back at the pass by the paterfamilias, then there seemed slim hope that any other young men would come calling.

 

Merry had not had reason to think about Caleb for a long time before their meeting in the woods. He’d asked her father, and her father had said no, and then the next week he was gone again, bound for Greenland. _You will wonder why I have left so suddenly,_ his last letter to her said. _My uncle says it is a fool who runs away from his problems, and if that is so, then I am foolish indeed. But if I do not go, I fear I will do something far more foolish at home. At sea, at least, distance makes me hold my tongue and temper still._

 

And so she let him leave. She’d had no word from him these past two years, no word except that last letter, practically smuggled to her by a neighbor at whose house he’d dropped it, asking her to deliver it, as he was no longer welcome at the Haymans' doorstep.

 

Could he blame her if her first instinct on seeing him again was to hit him?

 

She should have asked, then, what he was doing back in Setauket. _Perhaps he merely wished to see you_ , a wistful part of her thought.

 

 _You’re not temptation enough to run Devil’s Neck in the dead of night, Merriment Hayman, and the first man that tells you otherwise is lying,_ her more practical side replied.

 

But what other business could he have here? For that question, Merry had no answer.

 

“Merriment.” Her mother’s voice,  thin and distant, trickled in from the other room. “Is the tea ready?”

 

Merry tore her gaze away from the window and checked the kettle on the spider over the fire. “Almost, Mama,” she relayed, turning her attention back to the tray and the tea things, arranging the cups once more before pulling the kettle out of the fire and filling the teapot.

 

Mrs. Hayman looked up expectantly as her daughter carried the heavily laden tea-tray into the parlor, settling it carefully down on the little painted table beside her chair. “Thank you, Merriment,” Mrs. Fielding said, hardly turning away from her embroidery. Her mother, at least, looked up and smiled, catching the corner of Merry’s sleeve in thanks. Merry had to smile back, wondering (selfishly) if life would be much different if her mother wasn’t confined to the house.

 

“Does your father plan to go to town soon?” Mrs. Fielding asked, still engrossed in her work. “Your mother has need of more of this blue thread.”

 

“I don’t think so,” Merry said, pouring the tea and serving it. “I can go, if you wish, Mama.” She looked pointedly at her mother. _I wouldn’t do a thing for Mrs. Fielding, but if you asked, Mama, I’d try to move the moon for you._

 

Mrs. Hayman looked at her daughter again and smiled weakly. “That would be lovely, dear.”

 

Merry nodded, wishing that once, just once, her mother would summon a little more than just courtesy to ask for something. A little joy, a little pleasure -- a little anger, even! _A mother is supposed to be your teacher, your ally. What has she taught me?_

 

_She taught you to fight your own battles, Merry, by not fighting them for you._

 

 _No, Mama has never fought for me,_ Merry thought to herself grimly. _Mama stopped fighting after Henry was born._

 

Henry, and Sarah before that, and little Rebecca, and Joseph, and Charity, and a few others who had gone to their eternal rest before they could even be named. So many battles that Rebecca Hayman had not won. So many lives that remained unlived under little tiny stones in the churchyard. And after each one, Amos Hayman’s beautiful wife had retreated just a little more, until finally with little Henry’s death, aged fifteen days, she did not rouse from her bed, all her fighting spirit bled away, a shadow where a living woman once had walked. And her wake? A husband and a little daughter, age ten, who had only dim memories of the woman who had laughed with her and held her and dressed her hair. But no longer. It was as if Rebecca Hayman had simply stopped tried to live her life and instead remained content to let the world pass by around her without observation or engagement.

 

So Mrs. Fielding, widow, housekeeper, and companion, had entered their lives. Austere and stern, she read her Bible and little else, conversed amicably with Mrs. Hayman and kept her in middling spirits, dressed and taught the girl with a minimum of fuss, and generally kept things running smoothly. All well and good for Amos, who had one less thing to worry about with someone to watch his Rebecca. But not so well for a young girl who wanted, more than anything, a partner, a beacon, a friend. Mrs. Fielding was more like a schoolmistress, intent on teaching the task, not celebrating its completion. Any small victory -- a new stitch mastered, a new tree climbed, a new reciept baked to perfection, and she would run to her mother’s room, wishing for a little bit of shared joy. None ever seemed to come, only another lackluster ‘How nice, dear.’

 

Eventually Merry stopped running and sought her comforts elsewhere. Not that there were many places for her to seek -- with no mother to take her out visiting, her social circle was small, only old freinds of her mother’s who still occasionally dropped by to take tea, bringing thier own daughters with them. And sometimes those friends would invite young Merry over to their own homes, and their parties.

 

Parties where she might meet young men with glad eyes and broad shoulders who were shipping out soon as whalemen.

 

Merry’s eye drew back to the window -- the front room overlooked her father’s farm fields. Caleb would not come from that direction -- he was too canny for that. No, he would come from the woods, or he would not come at all.

 

“Will you not join us, Merry? Your mother’s done a fine job of cutting your new dress,” Mrs. Fielding offered.

 

“Thank you, Mrs. Fielding, but I think I can make it to town and back before it’s dark,” Merry decided. If she sat still this afternoon in this room she was quite sure she’d go mad for waiting.

 

Gathering up her cloak and purse (practically empty, but it felt right to have something in her pocket), she headed out the front door, latching it firmly behind her. So your mother doesn’t take a chill. She heard Mrs. Fielding’s voice every time she touched a dish, a door, a dress -- always encouraging economy and thrift and maidenly manners in her sharp, stern voice.  She supposed someday she’d be grateful for all of it, but today it was enough to drive a woman mad.

 

She set off quickly down the road, watching the path for signs of the inevitable horse manure or mud, knowing what a scolding she’d get if she came home with over-dirty shoes.

 

But not, it seemed, quickly enough. “Merry! Where are you going?”

 

Merry stopped, sighed, and put away any anger she might have had on her face that she could not even walk into town without her father noticing. “Mama needs more blue thread,” she said, turning to face him with a guileless smile.

 

Amos Hayman wiped his hands on the seat of his breeches and glanced up at the sun -- judging the time of day, no doubt, and calculating how fast his daughter could walk. “I’ll go with you,” he said, glancing around for his jacket.

 

“Papa…”

 

“I’ll go with you, Merriment,” Her father repeated, sterner this time. “There’s dangerous folk abroad these days. Now wait there and I’ll bring the wagon around and we’ll drive.”

 

Merry watched her father go and sighed again. If she’d been able to go by herself, she might have been able to stop and ask for…

 

_For news of Caleb? “Excuse me, have you had any news of my lover? Caleb Brewster, in service with the Continentals? Snuck ashore last week and hasn’t been seen since.” Fine sight you’d make. And who would you ask, anyway? His uncle? That’s a ways up the road, and you’d never make it back by sunset.  His cousin’s tavern? They’d laugh at you. Who, then? His friends? They’re all gone, too. There’s Abraham Woodhull left, I suppose, but he’s got a farm of his own, and a family to keep him busy. He wouldn’t know anything._

 

It was a short enough ride into Setauket, the road punctuated only by potholes and the occasional sound of seagulls. Even if she had to share the hard shelf-seat of the wagon, Merry thanked God that her father was not a talkative man -- she still had the consolation of her own thoughts, at least for the duration of the ride into town.

 

The village of Setauket was not what one could call a bustling metropolis -- a small village, home to the same handful of families that had settled in the area nearly a century before. Two churches -- though one was now in the kind care of His Majesty’s forces -- a few taverns, a green, a millpond. All of it as familiar to Merry as the back of her own hand.

 

Unfamiliar, however, were many of the faces she now saw in town, faces, unfortunately, that were attached to bodies wearing red coats and black tricorne hats. It was strange, not knowing the name that went with every face one saw in town, and Merry actually drew back a little into her father when one of the soldiers touched his hat and bid her a good day. Amos, noticing the sudden presence of his daughter against his shoulder, shuffled the reins to one hand and patted her leg affectionately, as he might reassure a skittish horse. “Glad I came with, are you?” he asked mildly. His daughter didn’t answer him.

 

Pulling the wagon to a halt in front of Josiah Brewster’s store, Amos climbed down from the seat to help his daughter down. “I’ll stay here, if you think you can manage alone,” he said with a smile. Merry tried not to look too disappointed in herself for making such a display of fear in front of her father and nodded in what she hoped was a cheery manner, gathering her cloak up before going inside.

 

Brewster’s store was not as crowded with merchandise as it had been of old, but there was still enough inside to tempt the eye -- bolts of fabric and lengths of lace, paper and packets of dried ink, barrels of corn meal and white flour, and a few -- a scarce few -- printed pamphlets, brought up special from York City. Of a Tory persuasion, no doubt, with the soldiers now quartered here.

 

Merry did not wish to linger -- Mr. Brewster marked the thread in his account book and then she was back outside to her father and the waiting wagon.

 

Except, of course, that her father wasn’t there. He’d stepped across the road to talk with -- someone. It was difficult to see the man’s face. Merry paused by the wagon, her gaze floating around the street, taking stock of all the changes.

 

“Miss Hayman!”

 

Merry turned away from the wagon, surprised to see the source of the voice -- Anna Strong, carrying a large package wrapped in coarse cloth. Merry checked to make sure her father was still across the street. Selah Strong had not high in her father’s estimation even before this recent business with Captain Joyce, and she did not like to think of what his reaction would be to her conversing with his opinionated, headstrong wife.

 

“Mrs. Strong,” she replied in greeting, bobbing a short curtsey. _What can Anna Strong have to say to me?_  “I was sorry to hear about what happened to your husband,” she said, struggling for conversation. And she was -- confinement to a prison, any prison, was a terrible fate, but from the little she had heard, the Jersey seemed a punishment beyond any of this world or the next.

 

“I pray he will survive it,” Anna said evenly. “In the meantime, I find myself with his business to run as well as our house.” Her gaze drew back towards the tavern, where a few red coats flashed behind the windowpanes. A sharp burst of laughter carried out the door.

 

“I hear you have several soldiers quartered with you.” _What does she want? Anna Strong was never a good friend of mine._

 

Anna nodded. “We must...all do what we can,” she responded, her voice curiously toneless. “I was ...cleaning the other day and found this in an old trunk,” she said, gesturing with the package in her hands. “I thought the color might look well on you.”

 

 _There’s some other business here, and I can’t see what it is._  Merry took the package, and, curiosity getting the better of her,  folded a corner of the wrapping down to show a fine, deeply colored Indian shawl. She looked at Anna, scandalized. “I can’t take --”

 

“It’s not from me,” Anna stepped close and whispered in Merry’s ear. “A gift from a friend.”

 

_Friend? We’ve no friends in common. But... Anna was a good friend to Abraham Woodhull, and Abraham to..._

 

She could not help but hope. “You’ve seen him?” the younger woman whispered, unashamed of her interest.

 

A pause, and then silent shake of her head 'No,' and then a sudden change of expression, frightened by someone behind Merry. She turned -- her father had returned, his face overcast.

 

“Mrs. Strong.”

 

“Mr. Hayman. I was just bidding your daughter good day,” Anna smiled once more at Merry, bobbed a little curtsey to both of them, and set off back in the direction of Strong’s Tavern.  _But if she hasn't seen him, then how can she have..._ But Merry didn't have time to speculate.

 

“You’d do well not to associate with that woman, Merriment. Her husband’s recent actions don’t speak well for him.” Amos Hayman saw the package in her arms and his frown deepened. “Something for your mother?” he asked. “I thought she said she needed thread.”

 

Merry considered lying for a moment and decided the truth would serve just as well. “It was a gift, from Mrs. Strong. It’s a shawl, an Indian shawl.” _An **expensive** Indian shawl,_ she wanted to say, but her father would have known that.

 

He frowned, but said nothing. If Anna Strong wanted to go around giving away valuable trade goods from the East Indies, there was not much his censure was going to do about it -- especially if his daughter was the recipient. Anna Strong had always been a little foolish. “Shall we go, then?” Amos asked, and Merry nodded quickly, bundling her cloak around her to climb up onto the wagonseat again, the wrapped shawl tight against her chest. _Would he have written to me?_ She could not feel a letter in the folds of cloth, but she could hope. A shawl was wonderful, however costly, but a letter would be priceless.

 

“Mr. Hayman!”

 

Both Amos and Merry turned toward the source of the voice, an older gentleman in a sober, well cut suit who was followed, very closely, it looked, by another one of the red-coated soldiers -- this one also wearing a cloak and a good deal of gold braid. “Judge Woodhull,” Amos said, leaning down to shake hands with the town magistrate.

 

“It seems an age since I've seen you out and about, sir.”

 

“My farm keeps me busy enough,” Hayman replied evenly, shuffling the reins in his hands, a little impatient to leave.

 

“Would we could all be so diligent with our fields, sir,” Judge Woodhull complimented with a politician’s twinkle in his eye. “I would my son had taken his lessons on the business of farming from you.”

 

“He has some trouble with it?” Amos asked, more out of polite interest than anything else. Abraham Woodhull, the judge’s second son, had studied law for a year or two at King’s College, but he had not taken a degree, and had come home instead to farm a little of his father’s land. The common view was that he was doing the best he could at it, even if his best was barely scraping by.

 

The judge smiled and shrugged a little. “Between you and me, sir, I think he was rather better suited to the law.” Behind him, the red-coated gentleman cleared his throat rather obviously. “Oh, Mr. Hayman -- Allow me a moment more to make an introduction, if I may. Major Hewlett is, ah, the commander of His Majesty's troops here. Major, this is Amos Hayman -- he farms a little closer to Conscience Bay -- and his daughter, Merriment.”

 

The major drew back his cloak and bowed. “Your servant, sir, madam.”

 

“Sir.” Amos’ reply was stiff, Merry’s almost silent. There were no markings on the package on her lap, but there was something desperate that beat inside of her and thought, over and over, He might see! He might know!

 

“So, what...ah,  brings you into town?” Judge Woodhull asked, back to making neighborly conversation.

 

“Mrs. Hayman had need of more thread -- Merry thought to come for it herself but with all the... recent trouble I didn't think it wise to let her walk alone.”

 

Major Hewlett bristled. “I hope it is not the behavior of my soldiers that makes you feel thusly, sir.”

 

Amos shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "It is more the ..reactionary young men hereabouts that give me pause, Major.”

 

“Ah, yes, there is that.” Hewlett’s face was full of shared sympathy.  “But you must allow me to say, Mr. Hayman, that if your daughter is ever the subject of ...unwelcome advances from my men you must deal with me direct. That sort of behavior will not be tolerated under my command and will be dealt with most severely.” He meant it kindly, Merry was sure, but she knew when her father wanted to say little on a subject, and this was one such subject she knew he would rather not discuss, nor she wish to think about.

 

“That is very good of you, sir.  I shall certainly keep that in mind.” Amos fidgeted once more with the reigns, clearly wondering what more this army major could have to say to him that should keep him away from the road home. But the two men seemed in no hurry to leave.

 

“I have made it a...a personal goal of mine to meet more of the local families hereabouts, so that we seem...more like neighbors, and old friends,” Hewlett was saying. “You and Mrs. Hayman must come to dinner. And your lovely daughter, of course. I promise there will be plenty of diversions for the young people!” He smiled at this last portion as though ‘diversions’ would be a special treat of a kind Merry had not seen before, though she was quite certain what he really meant to say was ‘plenty of young officers to dance with’, a prospect she did not relish -- for various reasons, old dancing slippers, awkward feet, and the explanation to give later to Caleb being only some of them.

 

“You are very kind sir, but you must excuse me -- my wife's health will not permit her to attend.” Oh, gracious and merciful God, I’ve never been so thankful for Mama as I am now, Merry thought silently to herself, hoping her desperation wasn’t showing on her face.

 

“Yourself and Miss Hayman, then!” Hewlett proposed. Merry’s heart sank. “Next week, Saturday. I insist. Judge Woodhull has promised me a particularly good joint for the occasion and afterwards you shall join me in a glass of brandy and you can give me your opinion about the ...reactionary young men of the area, as you call them.”

 

“I shall certainly try to attend, sir,” Amos answered politely. Hewlett nodded, pleased with himself, and finally -- finally! -- they were able to get on their way.

 

Merry waited until the town was well behind them to speak. “We needed go if you don’t want to, Papa.” Her fingers wound tighter around the corners of the package, as if by touch she could charm the sender out of its silky folds.

 

“No, no, we’ll go,” Amos reassured her.  Merry tried not to look stunned. “It should be good for you. You’re too much in your mother’s pockets, I think -- you need a little time to yourself. And the Judge’s house should be a mannerly place -- for all that the rest of his dinner guests are soldiers.”

 

 _But you wouldn’t like **my** soldier,_ Merry thought to herself. _My... reactionary young man._

 

Had there ever been a time when her father might have smiled with welcome on Caleb? _Probably not,_ Merry thought to herself. No, Caleb Brewster was not the sort of man her father would have chosen. One of the Tallmadge boys would have been his choice -- dutiful, hard-working, and very regular in their trips to church. But when one’s father was a minister, that was probably less from preference and more from habit. And hadn’t the young Benjamin had taken a degree at Yale? Yes, eminently more suitable -- until they’d taken commissions with the Continentals, anyways. But Caleb -- Caleb was...well, if she was going to be honest with herself, Caleb was wild, and had always been so.

 

She had a dim memory, at dame school, of a boy with dark, daring eyes who had stolen dolls and left them up in trees, who had climbed on the roof once as a dare and hadn’t come down until it was quite dark outside, who had absconded with a boat and almost made it across Little Bay on his own, a boy for whom the promise of the schoolmaster’s birch rod seemed of little deterrent. But the boy had remained a dim memory until some sunny, dry afternoon in summer when some neighbor -- she had now forgotten who -- was in the process of raising a new house on his property. Her father had gone to help with the framing and building, and she had come along to help the ladies cook the noon-time meal, and then the supper.

 

It was after noon, and the younger men, freed from whatever task they’d been set that morning, were standing aside, shimmering with sweat as they laughed and joked among themselves. For a while they’d been considering the group of young women, now sitting a little further off from their mothers, and then, suddenly, they pounced, every one of them rushing the little group whooping and shouting and causing more than one young lady to either squeal in alarm at being so treated or topple end over end trying to get away from the little war-band, who leapt through the ladies with, it seemed, the sole purpose of stealing their little linen caps and retreating into the woods beyond with their prizes.

 

A child’s game better suited to a schoolyard, and by young men of fourteen and fifteen! More than one mother or father dragged their son back later (some by their ears) to present the offended young lady with her cap (usually creased) and an apology (usually mumbled). Merry watched as the others fixed their hair and pertly accepted their apologies, wondering, for in all the confusion she had not seen, who had taken her cap and when, if ever, she was going to get it back.

 

It was nearly time for dinner again and Merry was getting a little desperate ( her hair was a mess and there was still the dinner to serve) when finally the ringleader, the boy who had shouted the loudest and run the fastest,  approached, the sad little circle of linen practically a scrap in his overlarge hands.

 

“Miss Hayman.”

 

It was the dark, daring eyes that gave him away. He was taller than he’d been in dame school, a great deal taller, and he was beginning to have all the signs of a young man who would grow into some strength. The hands that held her cap were wide and well-callused -- a farmer’s hands.

 

“Caleb Brewster.” She said his name only as she remembered it -- always both names, shouted, growled, and flung like a curse by too many harassed schoolmasters, as if to use one or the other would not deal a sufficient blow.

 

“My father says I should apologize for this,” He said, indifferently handing back the cap. Merry took it from his hands quickly, afraid his wicked ways might somehow burn her. “He says he’ll beat me if I don’t. But I won’t.” His eyes blazed in the early evening light, and the sun around his dark head touched it golden. “I”m not afraid of a beating.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“You look prettier with your cap off,” he said with a crooked, mischevious smile. “I won’t apologize for that.”

 

Merry felt her cheeks burn and didn’t know what to say. And then, as quick as a flash, he had kissed her burning cheek and leapt off running into the woods again.

 

“That boy is trouble,” Her father observed later. “I heard Reverend Tallmadge’s boy saying it was him that started the business.”

 

But that didn’t stop Merry from lying in bed that night with his kiss still burning on her cheek and the determined, carefree admiration in his eyes making all her limbs as restless as a storm at sea.

 

It hadn’t stopped, the restlessness, not in the years that followed, nor the first time he went away to sea, at nineteen, nor when he’d announced he’d joined the Brookhaven militia, and was to be given a commission.  She’d hoped it would wane, eventually, that she’d see someone else or he’d see someone else and she’d be free to return to the way things had been before, when she was the model of filial piety and duty and she didn’t have to hide anything from her father. But the day hadn’t come. Caleb was like the tide -- he left, sometimes, and wandered always, but he always seemed to return, each time bearing treasures from some far-off beach.

 

Like the shawl. It lay on her lap, heavy and warm, all the way back home. Rolling up to the farmhouse yard again, the dimness of the light reminded Merry that there was a great deal to do before she could even think of opening her ill-gotten goods -- the dinner to serve and her apron to patch, and her father’s selection from the Bible to listen to while she did it.

 

And then after that -- after, and not before -- then she could sit down and greedily devour her treasure.

 

Dinner took a century, and her hour with her parents and Mrs. Fielding decades more. It was only when the verse was finished, (and the candles nearly finished as well) that her father closed his book, rose from his chair, kissed Merry on the forehead, and began to help his wife back to their bedroom. Merry stayed half a moment longer, trying to finish the seam she’d been dancing around finishing for the last half-hour, and then tried her hardest not to take the stairs two at a time up to her room.

 

A quick hand undid the knots -- it must have been Anna who had wrapped the thing, Caleb’s knots were always the devil to untie -- and the shawl slithered out of its wrapping to the floor, soft and practically glowing with color -- a rich golden yellow, covered all over with the strange, foreign patterns of the East. And -- better still -- inside the rich folds was a letter, addressed in Caleb’s easy hand. Carefully retrieving the shawl from the floor and brushing it down with a reverent hand, she wrapped it around her shoulders and broke the seal on the letter.

 

 _Dearest_ ,  he began.

 

 _Am I such a spinster that I shiver to read even that?_ Merry thought sadly to herself.

 

_You will wonder, I think, whence I came by the shawl -- there is a good deal of trade around York City, and people will part with all manner of fancy goods in exchange for the basic commodities of life. I hope it looks well on you, with your new blue gown. Worry not, my thrifty little sparrow -- I did not part with too much money for it._

 

Merry had to smile at that last line. For all that he was the son of a farmer and the grandson of a minister, Caleb could spend like a lord when the mood was on him.  Sometimes, she rather thought he did it  just for the pleasure of seeing her in a state of agitation.

 

_You will have guessed, I think, that my trips home to Setauket must be few. When I am home I shall try to see you, though I think that may be hard. A man on my side of the law can have little welcome from the Law itself. I take this opportunity to recommend my messenger to you -- I know you have not been friends, but she is a good and faithful soul, and sympathizes with the Cause I am bound to, and the woman I leave for it._

 

 _He means Anna Strong._ No objection to the woman but her father’s had kept them from friendship before.

 

He went on for a little bit about where he was (Connecticut -- not as present occupied with British soldiers) and how he was spending his time (very poorly, to hear him tell it; there were long periods of boredom he could not quite reconcile himself with) and so on like that for a while. Then his name, dashed boldly across the page, and hastily added in, a post-script:

 

_I hope you will think of me wrapped thusly when you wear this -- I would like to be so close, and keep you warm._

 

A little flush went up Merry’s spine, and she allowed herself a moment to compose the memory of Caleb’s arms around her shoulders, his chest pressed to her back and his breath, warm and intimate, on those little curls at the back of her neck he professed to like so much. (And his beard, scratching at her skin, she should remember that, too.) Thus armored, she read the letter through again, letting his voice linger at her ears as though he were there himself to read it to her, and, after carefully folding the paper away, went to sleep dreaming of his voice whispering in her ear, and the hand that could write his name so boldly tracing patterns more intricate and strange on the pages of her skin.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first two chapters were more about Caleb -- this chapter is where Merry really gets a chance to say her piece.
> 
> The idea for Merry's melancholic, invalid mother came from an article I read recently on Patrick Henry (he of 'Give me liberty or give me death' fame) and his first wife, Sarah, who had some variety of mental illness that kept her confined to the house, and how his refusal to commit her to a mental institution shaped his home life in interesting ways. I have such a strong relationship with my mother that it's fun for me to explore how women get by without that, and I didn't really feel like writing another 'mom is dead' story. Luckily, Merry has some strong, supportive women in other parts of her life that fill in the gap left by her mother's illness.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merry and her father accept Judge Woodhull's invitation to dinner, and Merry learns a little bit more about herself, her town, and her host's son Abraham.

# Chapter 4

 

Merry had never, in her wildest dreams, thought she’d see the inside of Judge Woodhull’s home.

 

Whitehall, as the house and estate were called, had seemed in her childhood to belong to another world, far outside her own, too grand to even contemplate. Which was why this invitation of Major Hewlett’s concerned her so much. Or rather, concerned Mrs. Fielding, who spent the better part of the next several days fussing and polishing and hounding her father about the state of his Sunday jacket and whether or not his breeches were in a fit state to grace the gently damasked seats of the Judge’s dining room chairs.

 

But Merry, in her own way, was not without her own questions, wondering less about how they would look at Whitehall and more about why it was they were going.   _Perhaps it is just as the Major says -- that he wants to meet the locals. Papa’s well known for his loyalty to the crown -- perhaps that’s all the Major requires. Or maybe he thinks Papa can tell him something special about the townsfolk around here, something Judge Woodhull wouldn’t know._

_Whatever it is, I hope he gets what he wants and leaves us alone._

 

Merry steadied herself on the wagon seat as one of the wheels hit a bump in the road, instinctively smoothing dust away from her skirts as her father murmured encouragement to the horse. The new blue dress -- silk, for Sundays and holidays -- still felt foreign under her fingers. She had washed and scrubbed every inch of skin whether it showed or not, slipped on a clean chemise and her stays before adding petticoats (also freshly laundered) and her pockets and the final layer, blue and rustling, of the gown, and she still didn’t feel right. Afraid, perhaps, that she would somehow look out of place in it -- a farmgirl in a dress far too fine. It was all her own clothing, but it didn’t feel like it belonged to her just yet.

 

_Well, that everything belongs except the silk._

 

Mrs. Fielding had even taken the task of dressing her hair -- an unknown luxury, but one that even Merry had to admit yielded nice results, from what she could see in her mother’s horn-handled mirror. _At least I can say it’s my own hair. Some Philidelphia ladies don’t even have that luxury._

 

One of the Judge’s slaves met them at the door, bowing in his immaculate jacket. (Merry saw her father straighten his own jacket out of the corner of her eye, brushing his buttons with a suddenly concerned hand.) Then they were past the door and inside the front hall, and someone was taking her cloak, and there was laughter in the parlor beyond.

 

A red coat appeared in the doorway, glass in hand. “Ah, Mr. Hayman. How kind of you to join us! And Miss Hayman,” Major Hewlett greeted them as though this were his London townhouse, and not a temporary billet  far away from any and all polite society, shaking hands with Amos and catching Merry’s hand to kiss it -- a strangely intimate gesture, and one that taxed her faculties at hiding her surprise and unease.  “Miss Hayman, your dress this evening looks very lovely. Mrs. Woodhull -- do you not agree?”

 

Mrs. Woodhull, wife to the younger Woodhull, the Judge’s son, rose from her seat in the parlor to greet the party and, seeing Merry, nodded her approval.  “The blue suits you,” she said, with the air of a matron of forty well versed in these matters instead of a woman two years Merry’s junior.

 

“Thank you.” Merry’s voice didn’t extend quite far enough for anyone else to hear. Mary Woodhull wasn’t a local girl, and Merry’s small social circle didn’t extend quite far enough to know much about her other than that she’d been engaged to Thomas Woodhull, the elder brother, had married Abraham on Thomas’s death, and now had a son, also named Thomas.

 

“A glass of wine for you, Mr. Hayman?” The glass was already in Hewlett’s hand, full and ready for the giving. Her father took it silently in the spirit of being mannerly, though Merry didn’t think she’d ever seen him drink anything other than her cider, or perhaps a pint of ale when he was in town.

 

“Dinner, will be ready presently. In the meanwhile, introductions! You know Abraham Woodhull, I think,” Hewlett said, letting the Judge’s son, a short-statured young man in his late twenties, soberly dressed in a dark suit like his father step forward and shake Amos’ hand. “And we have some of my officers, here, Lieutenant Appleton, Lieutenant Shay,  Lieutenant Griffith, Captain Norris…” The Major kept going, some ten or twelve names in all, all wearing their regimental coats and their hair powdered, variations on a single theme. Merry was going to be very hard-pressed if she was asked to remember thier names later. But Hewlett seemed to have finished -- and he had used her name. She struggled again to listen. “You must pardon us, Miss Hayman, as we are a...slightly smaller company than usual. You may have heard about the business in Connecticut-- three officers dead and Captain Simcoe captured.”

 

“I hadn’t heard, no,” her father admitted, speaking for her.

 

“Terrible business, terrible. An ambush --” Hewlett paused, suddenly mindful of something. “But that is not a story for the drawing room!” he finished, smiling apologetically, as if Merry and her father would know of what he spoke. _Does he think we’ll share his secrets, if he tells us of this raid? And who would we tell, anyway?_

 

The frock-coated slave from the entryway appeared in the doorway again and the Major took the opportunity afforded him and offered his arm to Mrs. Woodhull to escort her into dinner. Amos took Merry’s arm without a moment’s pause. Obviously he’d been giving some thought to the temptation posed by a room full of officers, some of whom, it had to be admitted, were quite young. _Have you so little an opinion of me that you think I’d throw myself at one of them, Papa? I’m anxious to get away from home, but not so anxious as that._

 

Judge Woodhull’s table was a fine sight to behold, with a snow-white linen kicking up an extra bit of shine from the tall white candles in the table’s flanking silver candlesticks. _Spermaceti, probably -- the light’s better from them. And they’re a deal more expensive than wax or tallow._ Merry had a pair of spermaceti candles in a box in her room, wrapped carefully in paper. Another gift from Caleb after his first voyage. Worth a fortune, even for the whaler who killed the animal whose cavernous head yielded the white waxen stuff. But Judge Woodhull was a man of property -- and Major Hewlett, too, was obviously a man used to some comforts in his domestic life. Candles that seemed to Merry an extravagance best confined to a marriage chest would perhaps be of every-day use to men like them.

 

She took a seat at her father’s side, surveying the dazzling array of silver on the table with approbation, the forks and knives laid just so at each place, the cut-crystal glasses, the silver salvers piled high with meat and the towers of fruit, candied and sugared with a professional hand. _And who washes all this when we’re done?_ Her gaze jumped for a moment to the frock-coated slave at the doorway, surveying the party with a certain level of professional disinterest. _I’m sure there are a half a dozen more down in the kitchens to clean this up when we’ve finished._

 

Dinner commenced, each man availing himself of whatever was closest to his plate. Merry glanced for a moment down the table and resigned herself to what was at hand, too afraid to pass her plate and ask for a serving of the fish at the far end.  “I must thank you again, Judge, for the invitation. This is quite a spread,” her father remarked, looking a little overwhelmed by his own plate.

 

“Come, come, Mr. Hayman, I have heard from several people that Miss Hayman’s cooking is not to be rivaled in the whole of Long Island,” The Major said, passing an especially charming smile in Merry’s direction, which did nothing except make her feel very self-conscious that people should talk so about her. “Except, perhaps, by the kitchen alchemy of Woodhull’s Aberdeen.”

 

“It’s not the quality of the meal, Major -- only that I can’t recall when she’s ever had occasion to cook quite so much all at one time.” He hadn’t meant it as a joke, but one of the young lieutenants laughed, biting back his mirth when his commanding officer glanced his way with hawk-like censure.

 

“You’re saying you don’t host house-fulls of soldiers on a regular basis, Mr. Hayman?” Abraham Woodhull asked lightly from the other end of the table.

 

“No,” Amos said, his voice almost too blunt. “We don’t.”

 

The brevity of his response left an awkward pause in conversation. “Has your family been here in Setauket long, Mr. Hayman?” Hewlett asked, obviously mindful of the silence.

 

“Hayman and his family have been farming hereabouts for...goodness, almost as long as the Woodhulls have!” The Judge added, falsely cheery again to mask, as the Major was trying to do, what was turning out to be a deucedly awkward dinner.

 

“My grandfather knew yours, sir, and always spoke well of the gentleman," Amos replied with a slim smile.

 

“Do you have much property?” One of the officers -- was it Appleton? -- asked. Merry was sure she hadn’t gotten any of their names right.

 

“Fifty acres -- not all under cultivation -- a house, and barns to it. Not quite to the scale of Whitehall,” Mr. Hayman admitted, picking very carefully at his food.

 

It went on in this vein for some time -- the crops, the weather, the price of hay and the requisitions of produce and how a good price could be got if one had the names of buyers and sellers in New York. One of Hewlett’s lieutenants, it emerged, Griffith, was the son of a gentleman farmer and was himself well acquainted with the life, and for a while Amos was pleased enough to talk with the young man.

 

“I thought I had learned the names of near all the families hereabouts, sir,” Griffith was saying,  “but yours is one I had not heard before tonight.  Do you not attend church?”

 

Amos looked uncomfortably at his napkin. "I must confess, Lieutenant, that I have not been to a Sunday meeting in some time," he said, clearing his throat a little. "My issue lies more with our preacher, though, not with the Lord."

 

One of the other lieutenants (Shay -- Merry had heard one of the others call him so) sneered. "One of Reverend Tallmadge's, were you?"

 

Judge Woodhull looked displeased at this recent turn in what had been, up until that point, shaping up to be a rather pleasant party. "I seem to remember, Amos, that you left the congregation almost before I did," he added, backpedaling a little against this sudden attack on his guest's _bona fides_.

 

"Closely after, sir," Hayman admitted. "I did not think it Reverend Tallmadge's place to speak as he did about ...the rights of men."

 

“So you are a Tory, sir?” Shay asked, vindicated.

 

“I am ….not much given to politics.”

 

“That is hardly an answer.” The Lieutenant fixed his gaze on the farmer and took another very deep draw from his wineglass. The decanter near his place stood nearly empty, thanks in no small part to his efforts, and his face was beginning to redden. (Merry felt her own face going a little warm even after the little bit that she’d had, and she didn’t trust herself to speak.)

 

Amos considered his words (and his plate) very carefully. “I am a man who believes that some men are given by God to rule, and some by God to follow. He did not make a ruler of me, so I must follow the One he sent me, and those...elect few he has raised up above me.”

 

Abraham Woodhull, who had up until this moment been curiously silent throughout, cleared his throat. “But surely, sir, you must allow that you rule some things -- your land, for instance, your family. I imagine you would take it very ill if your daughter disobeyed you.” His gaze, clear and direct, flitted for a moment over to Merry. _And how should he look at me like that, as if he knows I am disobedient?_ Merry wondered to herself, not knowing whether she should meet his gaze to challenge it or look at her father instead. She settled, as she had been doing for most of the evening, on the pattern of her plate, before deciding her father was the better choice.

 

Amos considered his daughter a moment. “I have never had cause to see such a thing,” He said without a trace of guile in his voice. The table, obviously a little taken aback at such simple honesty, seemed to have nothing to say.

 

Abraham raised his glass with a sudden smile.  “Would we could all be so blessed as to have sons and daughters that obey us in all things! To dutiful daughters!” He raised his glass to Merry and drank.

 

“Dutiful daughters," the rest of the table echoed.

 

Merry noticed that Abe's eyes still rested curiously on her own as he washed down his wine.   _Wasn't there something someone said once, about when he was at school? That he was wild? Not like my Caleb is wild, but still. I remember his brother Thomas was the favored one._

__  
  


There was little of consequence in the dinner after that -- Shay and the rest drank a great deal, Mary Woodhull said very little except when she was spoken to, and Merry Hayman suffered silently until the very last sugared plum had been cleared away and the company had adjourned to the drawing room. Several of the officers commandeered the use of a table for a game of cards, her father beat a hasty retreat to the shelter of Judge Woodhull’s bookcase, in the corner of the room, and Merry, seeing little other option, found a seat on the settee across from the fireside to wait.

 

She had no interest in observing the card game, and she could not claim the prerogative of a fussy baby, as Mary Woodhull did, to quit the party. No, her only option was to bide her time until her father judged it polite enough to go home. She glanced at the corner -- he was already engrossed in his chosen volume. _Let him read, Merry -- he does it seldom enough for pleasure at home._ Books were one of her father’s great delights, though he did not own quite as many as Judge Woodhull did. Those few volumes he did own were long past  threadbare, their corners worn smooth from constant, loving use.

 

A sudden shout of triumph from the card players jolted Merry away from her study of the fire’s embers, pulling her away from the pops and crackles of the wood long enough to hear, from somewhere behind her, in hushed tones,  “A rather more interesting evening then we planned for.”

 

 _I can’t disagree with you,_ Merry thought to herself, turning her attention away from the fire and towards the source of the voice -- the Judge’s, she thought. Thier chairs were on the other end of the room, away from the card players and, she was sure, from her father’s hearing.

 

_But not from mine._

 

“I’m not sure what I think of your Mr. Hayman.” _And that was Major Hewlett._

 

“He’s a respected man. A moderate. People listen to him -- for when he does speak, which, admittedly, isn’t often, he means what he says. And his wife was well thought of, too, when she was well enough to leave the house.”

 

“Ah, yes, the invalid wife.”

 

“Save your skepticism -- she’s been ill these past fifteen years, or more. It gives him a measure of pity from the town ladies, raising a daughter practically on his own. He’s a good man to have on your side. He may play the country bumpkin, but he’s got a mind of his own, and he knows how to use it.  And his farm’s a good one. The daughter’s not married, and she’ll get everything.”

 

“I’m not sure I see myself settling down to farm here, Richard.”

 

Merry bristled and fought very hard not to turn and give the Major a piece of her mind. _As if I’d have you!_

 

But that hadn’t been the Judge’s intention, either. “Oh, not you, Major! But...one of your young officers might not think badly of selling his commission when this is over and finding a wife. Griffith seemed taken enough with Mr. Hayman over dinner.”

 

 _DId he?_ Merry worried. _I thought he was being polite._

 

“You look lost, Miss Hayman.”

 

Merry looked away from the fire to see that Abraham Woodhull had left the card players and taken a seat next to her on the settee, still watching her with those damnably knowledgeable eyes.

 

“I am sorry, Mr. Woodhull -- my mind was far away,” she managed, smoothing a non-existent crease away from her skirt as the fire popped again.

 

“No doubt at home with your work, as we should all be,” the second Woodhull son said easily.

 

 _Now, why don’t I think he means that?_ “You laughed at me, when you made your toast,” Merry accused.

 

He smiled and bit his lip a moment, considering something. “Oh, I was sincere enough in it! I'm sure you might still teach us a thing or two about duty, Miss Hayman. Though, if I may, “ he added, leaning in closer so that he did not have to speak so loud,  “I recall very clearly a young man named Brewster who used to tell all manner of tales -- about meetings when obedient daughters should have been at home.”

 

“Mr. Woodhull --” Merry started quickly, half-rising from her seat as though she might cover his mouth before someone heard. _I’ll knock that man senseless the next time I see him_ , she promised herself, incensed (but not really surprised) that Caleb would have spoken so freely about all the times he’d gotten her to break her father’s rules to go and see him. Abraham took her meaning quickly enough and stopped talking, at least long enough to crack a wry smile.

 

“Oh, your secret's safe with me. Though perhaps I still ought to take a lesson from you on duty.” His gaze darted to the other side of the room, where his own Mary  had just come back with young Thomas, bouncing him up and down while Lieutenant Griffith, the one who’d spoken at length with her father, babbled and cooed at the baby with surprising ease. Mary looked up and smiled beatifically at Abraham, and Merry, for a moment, wondered what she would think if she heard her husband’s opinion of their marriage.

 

Merry’s rage at Caleb surged for a moment, and she turned back to Abraham, suddenly feeling very sharp. “Do you see much of Anna Strong, these days?” she asked pointedly. _I’m not the only one keeping secrets here, Abraham Woodhull, and my memory’s just as long as yours -- or longer._

 

He gaped at her a moment, and then chuckled. “So she does bite. No,” Abraham said, resignation in his voice. “I don't see much of _Mrs. Strong._ ” The name was heavy on his tongue.  “I'm busy enough at home before I even think of time for visiting taverns.”

 

 _Well, that’s worth accounting for. At least he knows his duty, even if he doesn’t regard it as he should._ There was something about the way Abe spoke that pressed at Merry, some hidden guilt that he should dislike something for which he was supposed to be fond. _It pains him -- as Caleb pains me, maybe. And I cannot argue with that, nor censure him for it._ Merry felt enough was enough, and struggled for a moment to change the subject, casting around for something on more neutral ground. “Someone told me the other day your son is nearly two.”

 

“Thomas, yes, he is.” A safe cast of the die-- Abraham’s face lit up at the mention of his son. If he doesn’t love his wife, at least he loves their boy.

 

“Martha Davis's youngest isn't yet out of pudding caps -- and she's a delight to watch. They're so inquisitive, at that age. You mourn that we lose that sense of wonder we have as children.”

 

“Do you know Martha well?”

 

Merry shrugged. “Well enough -- her mother watched me, sometimes, when I was a child. I enjoy her house -- it feels…” she trailed off, wondering if she should say what she wished to. _Her house feels more like a **home.**_

****  
  


But even without saying, Abraham seemed to recognize what she meant, and the distant look in her eye. “I always loved the Tallmadge house, as a boy,” he confessed. “All those brothers -- there was always some mischief going on. But study, too -- everyone always had something of their own to mind. And Mrs. Tallmadge was always so kind. It always felt...full.”

 

He glanced behind him at the stairwell, and Merry got the sudden impression of the vast size of Whitehall, the many empty rooms and cupboards and their attendant stillness. What must it have been like, living here as a child, with the Judge for a father? A stern man -- she imagined there had been little time to run or shout or slide down banisters, nor any cosy evenings before the fire where he had taken his sons on his knee, as her father had done her, and read aloud to them out his books.

 

Merry remembered the sudden warmth of many such firesides, the safe feeling of being nestled against her father, huge and strong, and silently wondered when she'd grown up that now he felt so far away.

 

“It is a nice thing, to come home to a full house,” she admitted. There was another burst of laughter from the card players -- too loud, too coarse, too strong, intrusive to the last echo. _Not this full house_, she almost added.

 

 _You don’t belong here,_ she suddenly wanted to say. _You don’t belong here and I wish to God and all his angels you would leave, and we could all be as we were before._ “But there is ...something else to be said for silence,” she added, hoping that he would take her meaning.

 

“Yes,” Abraham admitted readily, his eyes also on the card players, their red coats dull in the firelight, candles glinting on their epaulettes and braid. “There is, indeed.”

 

 _I remember a boy I could not hope to know,_ Merry mused. _But we’ve grown more alike than I think you or I realize, Abraham Woodhull. At the very least, both of us are liars and fools._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It should be noted that I started writing this story without a super-clear timeline of the show's events. (It completely escaped me that the events of the first episode are compressed into a week.) Trying to fit a story around existing events and fill in gaps that may or may not exist therein is hard. So for that, I apologize.
> 
> I'm not completely convinced that the style of service I've used for the dinner is accurate -- service a la russe, where each dish is brought to the table individually, is very 19th century and service a la francaise, where the diners come to the table when it is already set and then sit through several removes, seems to have been more the style. But I can't be sure. Food and social historians, please feel free to correct me. (I also had a dandy of a time coming up with an 18th century dinner menu.)
> 
> I’m also not completely satisfied with the relative strength of Hewlett’s command in Setauket. He’s too highly ranked to command one company, and his losses seem too high to sustain a single company at strength, so I’ve gone with the idea that he has several companies, and thus several lieutenants, but not an entire battalion. History and the show are at odds on this one, so I’ve diverged from both.
> 
> Thus a few more pieces enter the board, and hopefully more of the story takes shape. If you're enjoying the story, I'd certainly love to hear about it in the comments!


	5. Chapter 5

It was probably a good thing that Judge Woodhull and his son had plans to leave Setauket the next morning on business to York City -- the dinner broke up early to allow them time to pack their bags, and further allow Amos and his daughter to make a hasty exit before anyone might be further offended by Amos’ plainspoken ways or his seeming lack of politics.

 

Merry didn’t think she’d ever seen her father quite so out of sorts as when they made their way home, after he’d finished the chapter of his chosen book -- he did not speak at all on the road, and it was only after the candles had been snuffed and the house settled down to sleep that she heard him talking to her mother, in tones of worry, speculating about why he’d been called to dine with such company. She did not hear what reply, if any, her mother gave.

 

She had never had much cause, before, to give mind to what was happening ‘in town’, probably because whatever was happening in town would be quite comparable to what was happening at home: the harvest and a thousand other little tasks to prepare for winter, the cellar to stock, the hogs to butcher, the cider to press, the soap to set. But with the arrival of the soldiers, a whole new landscape of activities and sounds had opened up, drill and forage and a great deal of guard duty, which looked suspiciously to her eyes like standing and waiting for nothing. And now that she knew some of them, they would have to be greeted every time she found herself in town. Merry was not overly fond of that prospect.

 

_Well, soldiers might have time to stand idle, Merriment Hayman, but you don’t,_ she reminded herself strongly, pulling her feet out of bed and gazing blearily at the horizon, already starting to show a thin haze of rosy gold behind the trees, her day taking shape in her head. _Breakfast first -- and while the bannock cooks I can start chopping the vegetables for supper. That’ll cook in the coals while I’m at the Deacons today, and be ready when Papa’s done for the day. And there’s the pie for tomorrow’s supper -- Mrs. Fielding can manage that. I’ll need the barrels I scrubbed last week from the barn. And an extra apron and a cap, or I’ll be a fine mess coming home tomorrow._

 

Properly dressed, and with her extra clothes tied neatly into a bundle, Merry headed downstairs, hearing, on her way past, the little sounds of her father, also rising for the day’s work, and her mother’s low voice, speaking softly enough that her daughter could not hear what she said. _Hannah Deacon will ask after you, and I’ll tell her that you’re well -- as always, Mama,_ Merry promised silently to her parent’s closed door, taking the steps silently in her stocking feet and laboriously putting on her shoes at the bottom of the stairs.

 

Yesterday’s embers were unusually obliging in the matter of getting the morning fire going, and Merry was pleased that her father was only just coming in from feeding his stock when the cakes were coming off the fire.

 

“I”ve set the stew to cook, and the fire’s good and hot so the coals should keep without much minding,” Merry explained to Amos Hayman’s back, busy with the latch on the door. “Should be ready when you give a thought to eating. And there’s a pie ready to be baked for tomorrow.” He wouldn’t bother with any of it, but it made her feel better if he knew that he’d been thought of and that supper hadn’t been forgotten.

 

“Are you going somewhere today?” Her father asked, confused at his daughter’s preparations.

 

“The cidering, Papa,” Merry reminded him, trying not to sound annoyed that her father had forgotten. Owning no  cider press of their own, (nor indeed an orchard big enough to make it worth the while) Merry loaned herself out for the whole two day process to help and received, in return for her efforts, a barrel or two of the finished product, which, sitting for a few months in the cellar, would be a fine, mellow reflection of fall days like this one when winter finally started knocking at their windows. She was going both to mind the press and mind that no small fingers found their way into the pomace before the press came down. Hannah and Daniel Deacon had seven living children and a small army’s worth of grandchildren to pick their orchards clean, and now they would need help pressing their bounty.

 

They were lucky in her friends and neighbors -- the Deacons grew excellent apples, some of the sweetest in the county. Though Samuel Townsend, too, was rumored to have excellent trees as well. But Merry had never tried his cider. As with Whitehall, Raynham Hall was a deal too fine for the likes of farmers’ daughters like her.

 

“Oh, yes, of course. You’ll be wanting a drive over, I expect? With the barrels?”

 

“If you don’t mind.”

 

“Soap’s getting low,” her father observed, washing his hands at the door. “Going to the Deacons for that, too?”

 

“In a few weeks. Hannah says she likes the help,” Merry explained, scooping the bannock off its board with an expert hand and sliding it onto a plate for her father.

 

“Or she likes to gossip,” Amos Hayman observed candidly. “Don’t her daughters help?”

 

“Martha’s youngest isn’t old enough to be left alone for long. And she likes to see me,” Merry added. Her father raised his eyebrows a little at that one, but did not offer any response, biting silently into his bannock as his daughter placed a mug of ale at the side of his plate and wiped her hands on the rag tucked into her apron, waiting at her father’s elbow.

 

Amos, half-way through chewing, glanced up at his daughter and the close watch she was keeping on the progress of his breakfast, frowned, and swallowed the rest of his bite unchewed. “In a hurry, are we?” he asked pointedly.

 

_Yes, Papa, as it happens, I am in rather a hurry._ But Merry said nothing, and returned to her place by the hearth, scooping up another bannock and laying it on the table to cut into smaller pieces for her mother and Mrs. Fielding to eat with their morning tea.

 

“Are you not going to sit down and eat something yourself?” Amos asked over his shoulder. “Come, sit and talk with your old father a while.” He turned in his chair, reaching back to grab his daughter’s wrist and urge her towards one of the empty chairs. Merry glanced at the fire, decided it could wait, and joined her father at the table. Amos ripped a piece of his bannock and handed it to his daughter without reservation. “You’re looking thin.” And then, as if he thought this would help, he added, “Hannah Deacon would agree with me.”

 

Merry sighed and ate her bread without comment.

 

“Did you enjoy the dinner, at the Judge’s house?” Amos asked, surveying his daughter with a quiet kind of interest.

 

“I... I don’t think the Major knew what he was doing when he invited us.”

 

“Maybe so. You looked to be enjoying yourself, is all. When you and Abraham Woodhull were talking.” Amos tore another piece of bread and chewed thoughtfully. “You ought to go out with the young people more -- instead of Hannah Deacon. Mary Woodhull’s a bright spark, and I’m sure she could use the help, with a young child in the house. P’raps you ought to ask if she wants help with soap-making. I’m sure she’s plenty of fat to try after her father-in-law’s butchering.”

 

_Yes, but Hannah knows me, and Mary Woodhull doesn’t,_ Merry wanted to say. _And she puts on airs when she shouldn’t._  “More than likely,” she responded in bland agreement. Amos, sensing he wouldn’t get much more out of her, finished his breakfast, swigged down the remainder of his ale, and slipped his jacket back on to load her barrels and bring the wagon around to the front of the house.

 

After brushing the crumbs from the dishes, serving Mrs. Fielding and her mother breakfast, giving the kitchen a quick sweep, and checking the coals around her little-legged oven one last time,  Merry was finally ready to leave, and her father was out front, as promised, with the empty barrels tied down in the back of the wagon.

 

The Deacon farm wasn’t all that far away, and were it not for the burden of the barrels, Merry would have walked. That was but one reason Merry liked coming here, that Hannah Deacon and her wonderfully comforting kitchen were always close at hand.

 

The second, and far more likely reason, was the person of Hannah Deacon herself.

 

“Merriment Hayman, you were an ill-named child. You’ve got a face on you like a raincloud,” the matron proclaimed as Amos and Merry rolled into the yard in front of the house. Merry couldn’t help but smile at that. No matter how black her moods were, no matter how low her spirits, Merry was always sure that Hannah would bring them up -- and so far,  in over twenty years of acquaintance, she had never had cause to doubt it.

 

“Hello, Hannah.”

 

“I would ask you how you are, my dear, but I think we can see that for ourselves,” Hannah judged, holding up a hand to help Merry down from the wagon. “Amos.” She greeted Mr. Hayman with the same directness. “You’re very kind to let us have Merry. Do you think Rebecca can manage without her for two days?”

 

“Have you space enough?” Amos asked, with a glance at the general tumult. If he’d forgotten that today was cidering day, Merry was quite sure he’d forgotten when she’d told him she’d be gone two days, and would be sleeping at the Deacons’.

 

“Oh, heavens, yes! And it’ll save her the walk home in the dark, and with all those soldiers about...”

 

Merry hid a smile -- Hannah Deacon knew perfectly well how to lead a man, and her father was easier lead than most. Amos’ face was momentarily overcome with all manner of imagined assaults. “I’ll come for her tomorrow afternoon, then,” he said, glancing at Merry with the same concern.

 

“We will keep a watchful eye on her until then,” Hannah promised. “Martha’s oldest will help you with those barrels, Amos -- WILLIAM!”

 

Her grandchild, a boy of twelve as leggy as a colt and just about as spirited, sprinted into the yard from the garden beyond, practically skidding to a halt in front of his grandmother. “Help Mr. Hayman with the barrels, please, they need to be rolled to the barn. And mind you go easy with them -- they’re not your father’s and if you break one you’ll have Mr. Hayman to answer to, and none of your mother’s pie,” Mrs. Deacon threatened.

 

“Should we --” Merry looked after her father and William, driving the wagon closer to the barn where the cider press was set.

 

“Let them do a little bit of the heavy work for once,” Hannah said sagely, watching them with an experienced eye. “Now, you and I are going to go inside and help Martha start that pie, and you’ll tell me all about this dinner at Judge Woodhull’s I heard all about.”

 

Hannah’s kitchen was, at the moment, rather full -- with chairs, benches, and a vast assortment of grandchildren, running in and out with a frightening array of empty bushel baskets and toys and agricultural implements. In the middle of all this ruckus stood Hannah’s youngest daughter, Martha, a matron of thirty with a round face and flyaway hair, directing the chaos with a practiced hand and an exceptionally sharp looking knife.

 

“No, not there, move it a little farther -- Merry!” The harassed face lit up briefly with a wide smile, and she looked for a moment as though she wished to come and embrace the younger woman before another pair of her children came running in, faces flush with tears.

 

“Mama, Jonno says I can’t play in the barrels any more,” a very tearful, red-faced six year old wailed plaintively, tugging at her mother’s skirt. “And he slapped my hand and called me stupid and I hate him.” Meanwhile, the little imp’s younger brother was also wailing, though he was not as candid with his reasons as his older sister.

 

Merry, seeing that Martha was in no state to console, plucked the younger child up with an alacrity that surprised him into silence, smiling wide and wiping down his face with a corner of her apron. “Oh, Jonas, what’s the matter?” she asked, her voice as sweet and motherly as she could make it. Jonas, confused that this woman knew his name when he did not know hers, paused for a moment of puzzlement and looked for prompting from his Mama.

 

“Will you not tell Merry what happened?” Martha asked, looking very glad, again, for Merry’s sudden and timely appearance.

 

“Jonno’s not being nice,” the four-year old stated, his lower lip stuck out in a pout. “He hit Betsey.”

 

“That was not very nice of him at all,’ Merry agreed, settling the child on her hip and marveling at how heavy he was. _I remember a time I could hold him in the crook of  my arm!_ “But I do not think crying will help. I think we should find Jonno and ask for an apology, don’t you, Betsey?”

 

Betsey, startled and still red-faced, nodded tearfully. But they did not need to go far -- the culprit himself soon materialized in the doorway looking, like many older brothers before him, harassed and eternally tired of his little siblings.

 

“Mama, Betsey tried playing in the cider barrels.”

 

“Yes, she’s just been telling us you slapped her hand,” Martha said equitably, fixing a long glance on her son.

 

“But she wouldn’t go away!” Jonno cried. “I tried and I tried to tell her to tell her not to and she wouldn’t stop! Honest, Mama!”

 

_Two sides to every tale_ , Merry reminded herself. It was in moments like these she was a little grateful she had not had siblings to deal with quite like this. “Betsey, were you listening to your brother?” Martha asked, her knife moving evenly through the next apple as she continued this little tribunal in front of the kitchen table. Betsey, her secret revealed, said nothing and stared fixedly at the floor. “Well, then. It sounds like you deserved the hand-slap. Those are barrels for the cider, and your sister Marianne spent a lot of time washing them and making sure they were clean, and we don’t like making more work for other people, do we? Now apologize to Jonno for not listening to him.”

 

Betsey’s little mouth was firmly frowning, but she did look long enough at her brother to say “Sorry, Jonno.”

 

“And what have we learned?” Martha asked, still staring her six-year old down. Betsey was resolved not to say anything more. “Merry, what do you think we’ve learned today?” the matron asked, invoking, again, the aid of the bystander.

 

“Well,” Merry considered, trying to be fair. “I think we have learned that it is always good to listen to our brothers. And that it is not good to tell lies.”

 

“But I wasn’t lying!” Betsey protested, breaking her silence for a brief moment and looking at Merry with a glare that clearly indicated she thought the older woman had sold her out.

 

“But it wasn’t the whole story, was it?” Merry pointed out with a frank look. Betsey couldn’t argue with that.

 

“And I think we’ve all learned you lot need more work to do!” Hannah pronounced. “I think there’s a few more bushel baskets out in the orchard that still need filling --- and Jonno, you will probably need to help your brother move the trestle table and the mill into the barn.”

 

“Can I help with the mill?” Jonno asked excitedly, his eyes wild with delight. Turning the apple mill that would chop the fruit into smaller pieces was an older boy’s job, and one that had always previously been relegated to his brother alone.

 

“You’ll take turns with William,” Martha promised, sending Jonno back outside.

 

“Can I help with the mill?” Jonas asked, repeating his brother’s question, now perfectly calm on Merry’s hip.

 

“I think you are a little short,” Merry admitted quietly to him. “But you may hand your brother the apples, if you promise to be very careful, all right? Now, are we all better? Shall we go down now?” Jonas nodded solemnly, and Merry set him back down on the floor.

 

“Where’s Marianne?” Martha asked, looking around for another of her daughters. “She ought to be here helping me with the fire.”

 

“I think she’s in the barn with William,” Hannah said. “Now, don’t give me that face, Martha Deacon, you know you would have rather been out there too when you were eight. Let her help her brothers and we’ll see to the rest.”

 

“How can I help?” Merry asked.

 

“Help? Merry, you’re a gues--”

 

“How can I help, Martha?” Merry repeated, refusing to take any nonsense about her being a guest. “I didn’t come over to sit and knit  for two days while you did all the work.”

 

“You may take that kettle off the fire and help me with the tea,” Hannah said. “Right -- Betsey, Jonas, you are going to go outside and find your sister, and you’re going to go to the farthest end of the orchard  with a bushel-basket and make sure we’ve picked the trees clean, all right? Marianne should help you with the basket, and you must help her with filling it. And you’re not to come back until the basket is full, all right? Now, a kiss for you, my angel, and a kiss for you. Off you go.” She touched the tops of the children’s heads and sent them trundling on their way, the business of the hand-slap earlier at least temporarily forgotten.

 

Calm restored again, Martha looked from her retreating children to her houseguest, and back to her children again and allowed herself a laugh.

 

“Hello, Merry, how are you?” she asked, standing back and giving her guest a long-overdue welcome. “Are you regretting coming over just yet?”

 

“Never,” Merry promised. “Now, where would you like this kettle?”

 

“Oh, just here on the table,” Martha swept a pile of peels into a waiting bucket and cleared a space for the steaming vessel. “I think Mama’s gone for the tea things.”

 

“The nice tea things,” Hannah elaborated, bringing out a tray with several mismatched but very pretty cups, a china pot with a chip in the lid, a tea caddy whose lid had definitely been dropped at least once, and, rather incongruous to the rest of the battered and battle-weary tray, a silver strainer. “Now, would you care for a cup of this ...well, I suppose I can’t call it tea, really. This lovely herbal concoction of Martha’s?”

 

“Raspberry leaves,” Martha clarified from her side of the table.

 

“You’ve...stopped drinking tea?” Merry asked, taking a hold of the kettle again and filling the chipped china pot part-way so that Hannah could sluice out the inside and bring the delicate vessel up to temperature slowly.

 

“The expense, Merry, was getting ruinous. We’ve a little in the house for when ...friends of a certain bent come ‘round, but otherwise this. Tastes well enough, and it’s warm, which is all you want, some days. And it’s very cleansing.” Hannah stopped and looked at her young friend’s face. “Unless you were thinking of the politics, my girl,” she asked, a little bit of warning in her voice. “Disloyalty and all that.”

 

Merry considered a moment. “Truth be told, I’d rather I didn’t drink it at home, either,” she confessed slowly, watching Hannah’s face for signs of displeasure. “But Mrs. Fielding insists. She says it is very good for Mama’s health.” _But the expense is ruinous, even without the tax._

__  
  


Hannah smiled. “And I’m sure your father agrees,” she observed pointedly. Merry nodded. “Well, we’ll drink a little treason here and keep it our secret, how’s that?”

 

“I won’t tell if you won’t,” Merry promised, which elicited a quick, ready smile from Hannah Deacon.

 

“Shall we pour you a cup, Martha?”

 

“Thank you, Mama, no -- I’ll join you in a moment. I’ll get this crust on first.”

 

Hannah nodded, allowing Merry to pull several of the kitchen’s mis-matched chairs into a little circle near the baby’s cradle -- awake and still quiet as a lamb, bless him -- before she spooned some of the leaves into the pot and set the lid on to let them steep. Merry caught a faint whiff of raspberry in the steam.

 

“So we’ll let that sit, and you’ll tell me all the news from home,” Hannah said with a smile, sitting back in her chair. “Mrs. Fielding still keeping you busy?” Nodding. “Now, there’s a woman who never broke a rule in her life. How Mr Fielding ever got a decent night’s sleep next to that icicle of a woman I’d like to know. But then, he wasn’t a roaring fire of delight himself, either. No surprise they had no children.” She prodded the leaves with a spoon and set the cover back on for a while longer, settling back in her chair with the air of Solomon about her, ready to pronounce judgement. “No, Merry, what you want is a warm, decent fellow lively enough to shout at you a bit when you’re being unreasonable and wise enough to ask forgiveness after he’s done the same. Never go to bed angry -- that’s what my Daniel used to say. Helped with the making of the children, at any rate,” she confided with a smile.

 

Merry had known Hannah her entire life and had still never really gotten used to Hannah’s bold way of talking -- but that was probably because she got so little of it at home. Mrs. Fielding didn’t think it polite to talk about such things. (But the things Mrs. Fielding wouldn’t talk about would probably fill a warehouse.)

 

If she was blushing, Hannah was ignoring it. She poured tea with a practiced hand and set the teapot back down. “So, any warm, decent fellows warming your windows lately? Or the hay in your father’s barn?” she added knowledgeably. Merry shook her head and chuckled a little self-consciously. “A shame, that. And you practically running that house yourself. But I suppose that’s why your father wants you home.” Hannah sat back in her chair, surveying her young friend cryptically over the rim of her cup. “Do you hear at all from Caleb Brewster, these days?”

 

Merry looked up, surprised to hear the name in open conversation. Why would she ask about Caleb? It’s been a long time since he was home. Hannah crowed with laughter. “Oh, don’t look so skittish, girl! I remember well enough the day when he came down the road with you on his arm as rosy-faced as ever and left with a frightful black cloud over his head, and shipped out just that next week with the whalers! And you silent and meek as a lamb whenever we saw you after that. A real shame. That boy needed a calm hand on him.” Hannah considered. “But you already knew that, I think,” she added with a sly smile. A blush bolted up Merry’s cheeks at the sudden thought of what a calm hand on him meant, and even Martha, from her position by the fire, protested, “Mama!” in scandalized tones.

 

“And didn’t I know you and John were busy in that hayloft for a month of Saturday evenings?” Hannah shot back at her daughter. Martha had the good sense to blush at her mother’s accusation. “I doubt young Brewster is any different from your John. Worse, probably.”

 

Merry tried to imagine Martha’s husband John (a good, God-fearing man who had always seemed the very essence of propriety and the model of an ideal husband) as a youth of twenty sky-larking about in barns and trying to hide from Daniel Deacon’s watchful eye, and failed, miserably. _Yes, Caleb was worse._ The past tense of the thought jarred at her. _Was worse? Is worse? Would be worse... if he were here._

 

“Mama, you’ll frighten Merry into never coming back again,” Martha admonished, her pie finally in the brick baking oven. “Pay no mind to my mother, Miss Hayman, she lives to scandalize,” she added, taking her place at the circle and glancing, for a moment, out the door to make sure her children were all still gainfully occupied and would allow the ladies their twenty minutes of peace and quiet.

 

“No, I don’t hear from Caleb.” Best not to mention the letter, or the shawl, or Anna Strong. And if I don’t answer her now she’ll only speculate, and that won’t do me any good.

 

“But you’d like to?” Hannah judged. Merry nodded. That, at least, was no lie. “Where is he, these days? Do you know that much?” Merry shook her head. “With the Continentals, surely. Well, he could write you here, if he wished. But I expect that boy isn’t much for writing.”

 

_It’s true. Caleb is not a writer._ Merry had to admit that much to herself. _But when he does write, it is as rich as rubies to me._ In her room, Caleb’s last letter lay inside her clothes-chest, its edges getting gray with use, her one and only talisman. There were other letters, older letters that smelled of salt and oil, but they had lost thier magic as newer missives had arrived.

 

“Mama,” Martha warned again, and Merry saw, for a brief moment, the look that passed between mother and daughter, the look that clearly said Drop it. Was her face so plain with its expressions? Or was Martha merely being kind? “Tell us about the dinner at Judge Woodhull’s, Merry. Was it very grand?”

 

“How did you find out about that?” Merry asked, taking a sip of her tea and finding it much cooled and quite good, the leaves putting just the barest hint of raspberry in the water.

 

“I have my ways,” Hannah said mysteriously, smiling over the side of her cup. “What did you think of Major Hewlett?”

 

“He seems…” Merry struggled for the word for a man who thinks in one world and lives in another. “Out of place,” she decided.   _Did he not speak overlong of men of poetry and learning, Shakespeare and Johnson, MIlton and Pope? He never seemed happier but when he was in the middle of a verse. To talk of military matters vexed him, and he always bid the conversation back to law and letters, as if he were not at ease talking of such things. I did not sense that the Army was his sole purpose in life, or his intended end. And the others knew it,_ she remembered sadly. _I pitied him, a little, when I saw their sidelong looks. It was sad that they did not think well of him, but sadder still that he did not know he held thier scorn_.

 

“That’s a word for it,” Hannah agreed. “Daniel went to see him the other day about the matter of our winter feed and he kept on about order and authority as if he were Moses, Aaron and the whole host of the Pharisees pulled together. He’s not a soldier -- that much was plain. Nor a farmer, either.” She allowed herself a laugh. “If they’re all like that we ladies might as well go out and fight -- we’d have the war over by Christmas.”

 

“Was it just the Major and the Judge?” Martha wanted to know.

 

“And some of his officers,” Merry said lightly. The less said about the officers, the better. No sense putting a spark in Hannah’s eye over something that wouldn’t come to anything. “And Abraham Woodhull was there -- with his wife and son.”

 

“Mary Woodhull,” Hannah repeated. “I never liked that girl. I didn’t think she was right for Thomas, and I know she’s not right for Abraham. But Mr. Smith would have her married, and Judge Woodhull would have her dowry.”

 

“Papa thinks I should get to know her better,” Merry mentioned, not enthused by the prospect.

 

“What’s to know?” Hannah asked. “She’s a sharp mind, I’m sure, but I’ve yet to to see her use it. Would do well if she could keep young Abraham in line. It’s no wonder that farm of his is practically failing. Behind successful men, Merry, there are always successful women, -- and never forget it. Look at Judge Woodhull -- look at your father! Wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without thier wives. Or their daughters.” She added for good measure.

 

“Did you know Mrs. Woodhull?” Merry asked, interested. The Judge’s wife had died when Merry was a child, and it wasn’t as though they had moved in the same social circles. What could Hannah tell her about the woman who had run Whitehall, and whose passing had left it as empty as Abraham had described?

 

“Bless you, no, not above a greeting in church on Sunday. But I know she kept him in line well enough while she was alive, and those boys of his, too. She was a good soul. Reasonable and fair-minded.”

 

But circumstance, it seemed, would not allow for further discussion of Richard Woodhull’s late wife. Before Merry had been given a chance to ask further questions, Betsey had reappeared in the kitchen, out of breath and with her hair flying everywhere. “Mama, Jonno fell!” she announced without further preface.

 

It was enough to catapult Martha from her chair. “Heavens above, can we not leave you children alone for five minutes?” She asked, nearly setting her cup and saucer down mid-air in her haste to leave, catching herself at the last moment and spilling her tea all down the front of her dress.

 

“I’ll go,” Merry said, rising quickly from her chair before Martha could fly from the room. “Come on, Betsey, show me where he is.”

 

Jonno was lying in the grass at the foot of one of the trees in the orchard, clearly having tried to scale its branches to pick the top of the tree clean. He was not moving, but his eyes were open and he seemed more stunned then hurt, looking skyward with a dazed look. Marianne, his elder sister, and Jonas were trying very hard to keep him still, and were murmuring encouraging thoughts about what wonderful things mama would cook for him while he was laid up in bed.

 

“Well, well, what have we here? I suppose the one at the top looked good?” Merry asked, kneeling down beside him in the grass. He nodded, tears streaking at the corners of his eyes. “I’m going to lift your arm up, all right? And the other…”

 

The whole catalogue of movements exhausted - wrists, elbows, ankles, knees, all ten fingers and just as many toes (that last one just to make him laugh a little) it was determined that neither arm was broken, and his legs seemed fine, though Merry was sure he’d have a great black bruise to boast of by the end of the day. It was decided that his further treatment would involve a hot cup of tea and no more tree-climbing, and he limped heroically back to the house with Marianne, refusing to be carried or helped at all.

 

The other children, finding no further drama in the proceedings once Merry had pronounced him fit for duty, returned to the business of filling their baskets, and Merry took an opportunity to survey the orchard in which she sat.

 

She had been helping harvest this orchard since she’d been a girl of ten, and not much had changed in all that time, save, perhaps, that the trees were a little taller. And such memories! Playing with the younger Deacon daughters when they were young woman of twenty and she a child of twelve, and so happy to be included with the big girls, giggling with their sisters as one or the other of them was conveniently gone for an hour or two, and came back with leaves in their hair and pleased smiles on thier faces.

 

And she’d done a little bit of that herself, too, when she was older and there had been no else to mind her. But their beaux always seemed to have quieter ways of communication than her own.

 

An apple hit Merry square on the shoulder, and she whipped around, looking for the culprit. She needn’t have looked -- there was no one else in the orchard. The apple had merely succumbed to gravity. But the sensation had made her remember something, another apple, in another part of the orchard. And that one had been thrown. She closed her eyes, remembering how angry she’d been, and half-inclined to throw an apple back -- though she didn’t know from where.

 

“ _You’re a rogue and a scoundrel, Caleb Brewster, and you ought to be whipped!” She said the first name that came to her head, hoping it would not make her a liar. A nearby tree rustled, laughed, and then disgorged a rumpled, laughing young man of eighteen._

_“You’re mighty pretty when you’re using all that book learning of yours,” Caleb said, considering her with an experienced smile. “And who would whip me? You?”_

_“Haven’t you somewhere you need to be?” Merry asked, trying to contain her annoyance both at Caleb, for being the boy (scarcely a boy, really more of a man now) he was, and at herself for enjoying it._ I don’t remember the Deacon girls’ young men being like this.

_“Half-day for apprentices today -- on account of the harvesting.”_

_“Then shouldn’t you be helping your uncle?”_

_“My uncle’s no need of me. ‘Sides, I like it here just fine. View’s nicer. Company’s more_ amiable _,” He pronounced the word proudly, and smiled at her momentary confusion. “See, you’re not the only one who can use a fancy word or two.”_

_“And where did you learn that one from? The wharf?”_ Where you’ve learned all those other words you’re not supposed to use in polite company _, she wanted to add._

_He laughed at that. “Oh-ho, so she does listen where she shouldn’t! No, from Bennie Tallmadge. He’s home from Yale. Full of all sorts of fancy words, he is.” He did not make it sound as though he thought much of fancy words -- though Merry knew he was a good friend to both of the Tallmadge boys -- Ben at Yale, and Samuel in his merchant clerkship._

_“So there’s to be no college for you in the future, then.”_

_Caleb looked as though she’d proposed he cut out his tongue. “Hell’s teeth, no! Bad enough I’ve got my apprenticeship without adding books and...and declensions, and all them old dead philosophers. Who wants it? There’s no use to it.”_

_“There is if you’re a teacher -- or a clergyman, like the Reverend Tallmadge.”_

_“Maybe it’s for Benny-boy, but that ain’t for me. Come to that, I don’t know that smithing’s for me, either. And I’ll be dead before my uncle makes me a farmer.”_

_“What, then?” Merry asked, curious and afraid of what his answer might be. Caleb was the only boy she knew who talked like this -- but then, she wasn’t in the habit of listening to the future plans with all of Setauket’s young men._

_“I think I’d like to be a sailor,” Caleb declared. “See the world, be no one’s man but your own. No house, no farm to worry you. Think of it- the water, and the wind, and the salt, as far as the eye can see.” He turned to look at her, and his eyes were full of a wonder so strong Merry could not help but smile, caught up in the beauty of his dream._

_Caught up -- but only for a moment. Dreams were well and good, but dreams never put food on the table or kept the roof from leaking. “Sounds lonely,” she said, ducking behind another tree and trying to get back to work._

_Usually that would have been enough, but today, he followed her, persistent as a puppy. “Well, I’d come home, you know, every...now and then. Everyone’s got to have a home. Someone to...to come back to. To miss them.”_

_“Didn’t you just say you’d be no one’s man but your own?” Merry asked pointedly._ If he means what I think he means...but let him say it. Let him say it plain.

_“Well...would have to be the right person, you know.” He clung to the nearest tree-trunk like a vine, watching her as if he were waiting for something._ Let him wait, _Merry decided._

_“Do I?”_

_“Wouldn’t ...mind if it was you,” Caleb said evasively, studying the ground for a moment and glancing at her out of the corner of his eye._

_“You shouldn’t tease, Caleb, it isn’t nice.” A little test, the tiniest of tests, just to see --_

_“Wasn’t teasing,” He said earnestly, and then, suddenly, she was pressed against him and his lips were on hers, the whole of him warm and smelling of sweat and apples, and though she knew a good girl ought to pull away she was strangely unwilling to comply. “Well,” he said, breaking the kiss and smiling. “Seems you wouldn’t mind, either.”_

_And she found herself smiling._

 

Which is what she was still doing when she heard Hannah calling her name. Shaking her head a little bit to clear it, she pressed her skirts down and checked to make certain her cap was straight (but it had never been in danger,  not this time, Caleb hadn’t been here to rake it out of her hair or rumple her skirts) and her pulse was not too fast nor her eyes too bright.

 

But Hannah always noticed. “Have you been running, girl? You look flushed.”

 

Merry shook her head. “Just the wind,” she lied, following Hannah back to the house.

 

The rest of the afternoon smelled strongly of sugar and hay, everyone’s ears filled with  the creak of the apple mill and its whirring blades sliding through pound after pound of apples, the wooden groan of the cider press as the pressing block came down onto the hay-wrapped mass of apple, followed by a cry of joyful surprise from the children as the cider, ruddy-gold and cloudy, came trickling out and into the waiting barrels.

 

It was hard work, for everyone -- Daniel Deacon and Martha’s husband, John, working the press, the children feeding the apples into the mill and carrying them up to the upper floor of the barn so they could be wrapped into hay and pressed until only the pomace, skins and twigs and some scraps of fruit, remained for the making of ciderkin. And Merry, Martha, and Hannah making sure everyone kept their fingers and did not get stung by the bees, attracted, as they were, by the sweetness of the juice. It was a quiet bunch that ate supper around the Deacon dinner table that evening, and not even Betsey, who could usually be relied upon for boundless energy, had the time to stay up after dinner and talk, knowing that tomorrow there would be more of the same.

 

Lying awake on a straw pallet in the Deacon’s upstairs bedroom, and listening to both husband and wife snore soundly, Merry found herself wondering how her stew at home had managed in her absence, and what Mrs. Fielding would do tomorrow about the pie if the fire had gone out. _They’ll manage without you,_  she reminded herself. _They’ll have to get used to it when you’re married. Unless you do what Martha did, and bring your husband home._

 

She could do that -- her father’s farm would need someone to manage it when he got old. _But Caleb never wanted to be a farmer_ , she remembered, the smell of apples still heavy in her nose, and a dull ache flaming at her shoulder.

 

Falling into sleep she dreamed of ships at sea, and what it would be like, one day, to leave Setauket.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merry is still at the Deacons', helping with the cider, when the house receives an unexpected guest, and Merry gets some long-looked for news.

Long years of practice had battered Merry’s body into rising early -- she did it now without prompt, and, usually, before the dawn. Even away from her own home and all the responsibilities therein, her mind would simply not allow itself any more sleep.

It took a few moments to adjust to the darkness of the Deacon’s bedroom, her eyes finally able to make out the shape of the bed, the clothespress, the chair. She sat up on her pallet, her back cringing at little after a hard night’s sleep on the floor, and reached for the place where she’d left her petticoats. There were noises downstairs -- the usual domestic ones -- and Merry did not feel inclined to laze about in bed.

_My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up. For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee._

The psalm floated over her tongue in rote memory, followed, quickly after, by the Proverbs. _A dutiful woman who can find? For her value is beyond rubies. She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens..._

Prayers finished and petticoats tied, Merry made her way downstairs to see if the dutiful woman of this household would need any assistance portioning. Martha was, as expected, in the kitchen, wrapped in a bedgown and fiddling with the fire, the baby fast asleep in his cradle near the hearth.

  
“Merry! You could have stayed abed another hour.”

 

“Couldn’t sleep,” Merry explained.

 

Martha smiled and rolled her eyes. “There will come a time in your life, Merriment Hayman, when you wish you’d slept longer,” she cautioned with a knowledgeable eye. “Sleeping like a baby does not mean what most folk think it does.” She glanced at the cradle with a half-exasperated smile.

 

“No slug-a-bed Sundays for mothers?” Merry asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.

 

“None at all,” the older woman confirmed. “Still -- wouldn’t trade my sleepless nights for the world. Or my quiet mornings, either.” She glanced around the kitchen -- yesterday so noisy and full of life -- and looked content. “This is my favorite time of day.”

 

“Mine, too.”

 

Martha surveyed her younger friend with a discerning eye, surprised to hear her say it. “Expect it gets a little tiresome, always having your parents and Mrs. Fielding underfoot. It’s nice to have some time to yourself and your thoughts.”

 

Merry considered that the same thing might be said for Martha’s mother, never mind the rest of her boisterous family, and could not help but smile. “It is.”

 

Martha nodded, and continued her preparations for breakfast. Merry looked on in somewhat helpless confusion, her hands, tucked into the corners of her sleeves, itching to lose their idleness. “Martha, you must let me help you with something.”

 

But Martha was resolute -- she steered her friend to a chair and firmly installed her there before returning to the business of breakfast. “Let us have no more talk of helping, Merry. I’ve managed for all these years without a hired hand and I do not aim to make you over into one now. Your father would murder me.”

 

“Plenty of other girls start in service,” Merry put in, thinking of Whitehall and the unseen but strongly felt presence of what must have been a small army of servants, and slaves. It was common enough practice to send a daughter out to earn a little money while she was young and waiting for an offer of marriage.

 

“Plenty of other girls also come from homes with too many mouths to feed, and end up with the master’s sons taking liberties they shouldn’t,” Martha responded sharply. Merry’s shock was hard to disguise -- she’d never heard Martha voice so strong an opinion about -- well, anything, really. Martha must have realized how she sounded, because when she spoke again, her voice was softer. “And you’ve done work enough at home to know how a house should be run. Besides,” she added, returning to her board, “likely as not you’d get a bad mistress who’d pay you next to nothing, hardly feed you, and never give you an hour save Sunday for your own. And complain, constantly, that you hadn’t done things that she hadn’t yet asked you to do.”

 

“Like Mrs. Fielding does?” Merry asked, feeling a little angry herself. Now it was Martha’s turn to look shocked, replaced, quickly, by sympathy. The comment wasn’t fair to Mrs. Fielding -- as Merry had gotten older she had become less demanding, and had even, on occasion, taken Merry’s side to encourage Mrs. Hayman to take some interest in her daughter’s efforts. But the simple fact was that she was more mistress than mother, and Mrs. Hayman more houseguest than either.

 

“Oh, Merry.” But she had no time to sympathize further -- a plaintive wail rose up from the cradle, thin and pitiful. They had woken the baby. “Come now, Isaiah, what is too much for you now?” Martha wondered aloud, looking about for a cloth to wipe her hands on.

 

“I’ll get him,” Merry said, striding quickly over to the cradle and picking up the child, coming out of sleep in a building state of agitation, probably because his bed had ceased to rock. “There, now,” she said softly, wrapping the blanket around his little back and settling him against the crook of her shoulder, bouncing lightly and patting his back until the fretful crying ceased. “There, now.” She felt the little body settle in contentment, warm and heavy, and continued her little dance in place. For a while the world was simply her and baby Isaiah, until she turned, in the course of her dance steps, and came back around to the baby’s mother, staring at the pair in quiet wonder.

 

“We really must get you settled,” Martha decided, smiling fondly. “You look so at home with a baby. No, leave him there a while,” she encouraged, as Merry made a motion to take him off her shoulder and settle him back in the cradle. “He’ll fret less if he’s held.  And that will be all the help I need.” She turned back to the business of the fire, and the kettle for porridge. “I know you didn’t wish to speak of it to my mother, Merry -- but do you hear from Caleb Brewster?”

 

Sweet Martha, who listened too well. Was it something about women with older sisters that made them good listeners? Or was that something she inherited from her mother? “I’ve had one letter,” Merry acknowledged truthfully. “I don’t think I’ll get more.”

 

Martha looked sad on her behalf. “My mother meant it, when she said he could write you here. For what that’s worth. She liked him -- we all did.” She considered another thought, and decided it was worth the time to speaking. “You’re a great comfort to my mother, Merry -- I hope you know. I know she’s got a funny way of showing it, but you are. She likes to have someone to fuss over -- it’s her natural state of being.”

 

“Now, now, who’s talking of natural states of being in my kitchen?” Hannah asked cheerfully, descending into the kitchen washed and dressed and proper as could be. “I heard Isaiah crying -- but it looks like Merry has him well in hand.” She watched Merry for a moment looking very pleased with herself, and then set into the business of breakfast -- no small order with a household of this size.

 

Mr. Deacon and Martha’s husband John were down shortly, barely stopping on their way out to the milking, and followed, sleepily, by William, who at twelve was being given more of his adult responsibilities now. Marianne, Martha’s eldest daughter, came down with the other children, Jonno and Betsey and Jonas and Louisa, the littlest but Isaiah, two and still a little tired, practically sleeping on her sister’s shoulder. Each was kissed good morning and settled into the table to manage with breakfast -- porridge.

 

A small domestic scene -- one of many such taking place this morning all over Long Island. Watching Marianne help Louisa with her porridge, modeling how to take small bites of porridge instead of trying to see exactly how much one could heap on the end of a spoon and then shovel into a waiting mouth, Merry could not help but think of her own brothers and sisters, most gone to rest too small to have ever left much of an impression. This should have been her family -- a full breakfast table.

 

A woeful thought -- quickly summoned and just as quickly banished. A day’s work left little time for melancholy - and they had quite a day’s work ahead of them, make no mistake about it. The cider would have to be finished and casked, and the rest of the apples remained to the dry floor of the attic to overwinter on a bed of dry straw -- turned and picked over once a week by Marianne and Betsey and Jonno.

 

Now that the heavy business in the barn was done, they could turn their attention to the apples they’d keep in the house for eating. Martha and Merry cleared the kitchen table and laying out the knives and the twine for stringing.

 

“Betsey, step away from the knife, please,” Martha said strongly, discouraging her six year old away from the longest and shiniest of the horn-handled implements on the table. Betsey put her hand down, ashamed, and tried not to cast any more covetous looks at her older sister, who was tall enough to actually stand at the table and use it. “Now, Merry and Marianne will cut the pieces, and you all will string them up -- straight through the center, just like Jonno is doing. Very good.”

 

“Can you thread my needle, Mama?” Betsey asked, holding up her work for her mother.

 

“I think you’re quite old enough to know how to thread a needle, Betsey-girl,” Martha replied, too busy with making sure Josiah didn’t stick himself too many times.

 

Betsey, undeterred, turned to Merry. “Merry, will you thread my needle?”

 

Merry tried not to laugh at the six year old’s resourcefulness and tried to think of a compromise. “Why don’t you do it with me, Betsey? For you will need to know how to do it yourself someday, if your mama is not here. Now, pull it through the wax here, and then when it is good and straight…”

 

The work went quickly, once everyone’s tools were assembled and those responsible enough to be entrusted with knives could finally set to the stock of apples at hand. It wasn’t until the kitchen was fragrant with apples and the stew for lunch that Merry even noticed the time passing. They moved quickly from the apples to some beans that Martha had set aside to dry, and were just finishing those, too, when they heard a wagon moving past the front door, and a driving calling a team of horses to a stop. Hannah raised herself out of her chair and moved to the window.

 

“Oh, good -- that’ll be Mrs. Strong.”

 

Merry nearly sprang to the window herself -- and then checked to make sure that the news of this recent arrival hadn’t distracted the children from their work.(Josiah was having more fun spilling the beans on the floor, but there was a cloth down, now, and Betsey, in the put-on grown-up way that only six year olds can summon, had already chided him once, which seemed to give him the general idea that no one else found it funny and he was not to do it anymore.)  She glanced around the table again, and, convinced they were settled enough to manage without her, followed Hannah to the doorway, watching carefully wondering if she should make her presence known. Did she want to try and speak to Mrs. Strong? (Did she want Hannah to see her do so?)

 

“Mrs. Strong! You’ll have come about the cider.”

 

“I have, Mrs. Deacon.” Anna Strong stepped down from the wagon and wrapped her cloak closer around her in the mid-morning chill.

 

“Well, step into the kitchen here -- wasn’t quite so bitter yesterday when we were pressing. Come in, come in --” She bustled her guest inside, and Merry sprang back to the table, trying to be invisible. “ You know my daughters’ children, I think.” Hannah made a general motion to the room, and the children looked up, momentarily distracted by the guest. Anna gave them all a nervous smile and nodded in greeting. She wouldn’t be comfortable with children, Merry realized. She has no children of her own. “A very successful harvest this year, I think," Hannah continued, dipping a ladle into the small cask they’d brought into the house the other day and holding out to Anna to taste. She took it, careful not to spill, and took a sip.

 

"Sweet," she pronounced, not unhappy at the prospect.

 

"It'll ferment very nicely," Hannah said with an expert tone, watching the tavernkeeper like a hawk. Anna took another sip and passed the dipper back.

 

"Four barrels, Mrs. Deacon."

 

"Four!" Hannah sounded shocked. "I seem to recall it was to be seven."

 

"It _was_ to be seven," Anna agreed. "But that agreement was made with my husband, and...with....recent events..." she trailed off, uncertain of how to say what she meant to. "I have been given to understand that Strong Tavern may not bear that name much longer, my husband's...offences...being what they are."

 

"What, that business with Captain Joyce? Surely that has been settled on other parties. We all know your husband to be a man of ....decided opinions, certainly, but not so iron-bound as kill a man." 

 

"Yet Major Hewlett will charge him thusly," Anna reported, resignation in her voice. "For that or some other imagined thing -- the law will provide me no clear answers. Regardless, his property is subject to Crown seizure. I would rather not invest in what I do not know I can keep."

 

"Four barrels it is, then." Hannah decided. "I'll have Daniel drive them to the tavern for you within the week."

 

Anna nodded, looking very pale and very anxious, as though the business of breaking a bargain had hit her hard. "Thank you."

 

"We were sorry to hear about your husband's treatment," Hannah added, her voice softer now, no longer the shrewd businesswoman intent on profit. "He was ill-used, and I think more people know that then you think."

 

"Better they should speak up about it than merely think it." Anna's voice was sharp and unapologetic, a fact not lost on Hannah, though the older woman made no comment. _But how can people talk about it, if they know the same treatment awaits them if they should speak?_

 

"Have you time to join us for luncheon?” Hannah asked, trying to be hospitable even if her visitor was at present a little angry. “We were nearly ready to eat something. My daughter Martha is here, and Merry Hayman." She gestured into the room, and Anna, registered, as she had not before, that there were not one, but two adult women in the room.

 

"Mrs. Strong," Merry made her presence known from a few steps behind Hannah, drawing Anna's anxious eye back to her.

 

"Miss Hayman! I...did not expect to see you here."

 

"I usually help the Deacons with the apple harvesting," Merry said, wondering what was so heavy on Anna's mind that she would have forgotten the number of times she'd seen Merry in the orchards when she was skylarking with Abe and Caleb as children. _But maybe she doesn't remember those days as I do._

 

“So shall we lay a place for you?” Hannah asked again. “I’m sure Merry would be glad of the news from town, if you have it.”

 

Anna nodded, still very much in thought. "Thank you, Mrs. Deacon, you are kind to offer. There’s business that needs attending to in town -- But if I might...have a word with Miss Hayman, for a moment?"

 

Hannah raised an eyebrow, but made no further show of surprise than that, stepping back into the kitchen to allow the two women to talk in peace near the door.

 

"Yes?" Merry saw no package in Anna's hands, no letter. _But she did not know I would be here. If Caleb had written, she would not have known to bring it here._

  


Anna's mind seemed to be turning furiously inside her head, her eyes bright with anxious agitation. "I thought you might like to know that the ...the goods you asked for, when we last spoke, are finally come in.” Seeing Merry’s confusion, she tried to clarify.  “Our ...mutual friend finds himself back in town."

 

 _Our friend!_ "In town?" Merry asked, now newly anxious herself. _Caleb, in town? With all those soldiers about, and him the kind of man who would pick a fight at the drop of a pin?_

 

"Near enough," Anna amended, realizing her error. She will not tell me where he is -- for her safety? For mine? "But he cannot stay long, and I think -- I know -- that the goods on offer will very quickly be gone, too. It would be wise to be in town early, _tomorrow_ , so as not to miss them." She saw Merry's eyes jump to the road, and laid a hand on her arm, as if to stop her bolting in the direction of Setauket. "You will not catch him there today," she warned. "Just tomorrow."

 

"Early," Merry repeated.

 

"Yes."

 

"Thank you." She did not know what else she could say, what question she could ask that would not be overheard by Hannah, standing watchfully by the fire and observing the two women most closely. "Is he...well?" _Is he safe? Is he healthy? Is he eating? Has he got clean clothes? A place to sleep out of the cold? Does his coat still have holes in it that I should be patching?_

 

Anna smiled at that, some of her own anxiety gone. "Well enough. And, I'm sure, would send his regards, if time permitted."

 

"Of course,” Merry agreed. “He is much needed where he is."

 

"Indeed." Anna's gaze was dark and direct, without a hint of disagreement in it. Merry meant the phrase to mean only that it was good that he was safe, but Anna -- Anna had heard something else in it, that he was needed with the Continentals, maybe? _I suppose that's true -- for all that I don't like it._

 

Oh, so many things that wanted saying! Merry was getting a good idea that Anna _did_ know where Caleb was, and _had_ seen him, and was probably hiding him herself, but would not say where. And if Caleb really would be in town tomorrow, and leaving from town, then something was wrong -- though what that was, she wouldn't know. He'd never said where or how he managed to come ashore the first time. She hadn't asked -- it hadn't mattered then. But it mattered now. Would there be time to speak tomorrow? Or would he do something foolish to get away, something ...covert? Merry had sudden visions of her whaler rolled up in rugs or smuggled out in barrels, and decided it would be better not to wait and see if she could speak with him.

 

"If you...see him, before I do, would you send my regards?" There was little she could do about the desperate tone in her voice -- she was desperate and there was little need to hide that from Anna Strong, who, she was sure, could speak at length herself on desperation at the moment. _Tell him I love him, please?_

 

Anna nodded. "I could do that." She glanced at the rest of the Deacon family, Martha pointedly ignoring the two of them while Hannah, inveterate gossip that she was, seemed to be too innocently involved in her embroidery. "I should let you go. But I will do as you ask. Tomorrow morning, remember."

 

Merry nodded, opening the door and holding it ajar as Anna carefully tucked her skirts over the sill of the door. "Good day, Mrs. Strong. Thank you."

 

"Good day, Miss Hayman."

 

Merry stood in the doorway until Anna was at her wagon, breathing evenly to steady herself as she watched Anna and her driver depart back down the road to Setauket and Strong's Neck beyond. _Anna will tell him, if she sees him, and I will go to town tomorrow as if I always planned to, and no one will be any the wiser about any of it._

 

"What were you and Mrs. Strong speaking of? If I had known you had any shopping to do in town we should have gone today," Hannah offered, still watching Merry with that searching eye of hers.

 

"My mother had need of ...pins," Merry said the first thing that came to mind. "No one had any the last time I looked, and I made mention of it, in passing, to Mrs. Strong. She...must have remembered."

 

"Pins." Hannah's skepticism was evident, but Merry didn't much care. Let her believe what she likes, only let her stop asking questions before I say something I shouldn't. "Well, it was kind of her to remember," the older woman offered. "Though I don't know why she should have needed to talk privately to you about it."

 

Merry chose to ignore this and found a lot of small business to do helping put lunch on the table before Hannah could ask anything else, and burned her mouth trying to eat her soup too quickly.

 

She could hardly stay in one place long to finish a task, hardly sit still long enough for Daniel Deacon to drive her home that afternoon nor hardly sleep that night for waiting, watching, for the sunrise that would bring her the next day and the promise, slim but stable, of a sign that all was well with her beloved. She rushed through her morning chores (almost fed her father half-baked bread and very nearly left the dishes dirty in the pan) and practically flew out the door before Amos, a little bewildered at this sudden change in his daughter, could ask what was wrong.

 

Her heart was beating wildly by the time she’d walked all the way into Setauket proper, some of her hair escaping its pins. _Steady, Merry. After all, to everyone else this day is perfectly normal. Slow your breath and steady yourself, or someone will think something is wrong. Even when nothing could be more right._

  


Taking a moment to breathe, she cast her eye about the common -- a few farmers with thier hogs, a few children here and there, clutching toys, or baskets with their mothers’ shopping. But no sign, at all, of a bearded whaler trying to make an escape of some kind.

 

Her gaze traveled over to the tavern. Should I go and speak to Anna Strong?  But Anna wouldn’t speak to her -- she’d probably taken a risk enough in telling her to come here. And there was convention to consider. She could practically hear Mrs. Fielding in her ear again. Young ladies of good name do not go into taverns, Merriment.

 

She was aware, painfully aware, of how strange she must have looked, standing in the green without some occupation to keep her there. She had brought no basket, carried no parcel. _Will people wonder why I’m here?_

 

But no one was wondering. Everyone else was too busy about their own business on this early autumn morning to pay any attention to Amos Hayman’s daughter lingering in the square.

 

She was torn. Should she wait here for some sign, some flutter of movement that might let her know where he might be, or did she need to manufacture some business -- in his cousin’s store, maybe -- and return in an hour to resume her post? Or did she brave Strong Tavern and simply ask Mrs. Strong where she might expect to see him?

 

But it seemed someone else would decide for her -- There was a sudden commotion down by the pier, and Merry watched, interested, as a boat, breaking away from the line of the shore, made for the open water. The soldiers at the end of the pier were suddenly alert, and then -- no, but they were firing! Too late. The shots fell short -- to the amusement, it seemed, of the boat’s new captain, who was saying something -- no, not saying, but singing.

 

_"Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies_

_Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain..."_

  


And the voice that sang it -- no, it couldn’t -- couldn’t be…

 

But that was a dark-haired head... and that was certainly a beard...

 

_You’re not going to run to that pier, Merry Hayman. You’re not going to run to that pier..._

 

But she was running, down to the wharf and the waterside, craning to catch one last glimpse of the boat as it made its way into the harbor, and the open waters of Devil’s Belt far beyond, as the mocking notes of Caleb’s song died away on the breeze.

 

He hadn’t sung that song for her -- she knew that much. He’d picked it to mock the soldiers on the pier, the men now staring after him, dumbfounded and at a loss now that he was outside the range of their guns. But was it so terrible to believe that maybe, maybe he had sung hoping she would hear it, and remember him? Maybe Anna had told him she would be waiting and watching, and he had changed his tune accordingly?

 

The song repeated in her memory, the voice close and warm, the air around her smelling of straw and old wood, while he half-whispered, half-sung.

_“Farewell and adieu to you Spanish ladies_

_Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain...”_

_“Caleb, stop!”_

_“What, you don’t like my singing?” The question was mischievously put, as Caleb’s questions always were, half to make her laugh and half to infuriate her, his arms wrapped around her waist as they lay in the hayloft of her father’s barn, hidden away for a spare half-hour to say all the things a person couldn’t say on the street in town._

_“Why is it I don’t hear you singing about Long Island ladies like that?"_

_“We could change it,” he suggested. “Though it don’t sound near as good. ‘Farewell and adieu, to you Long Island Ladies…’” He got an elbow in the ribs for that. “Now, who says you’re not my Lady of Spain? You could be, you know -- dark pretty hair like yours, and dark eyes.” His nose was buried in her hair, working its way loose from its pins, her cap somewhere in the loft, lost in thier play. She closed her eyes, selfishly enjoying his assessment of her looks. “Probably descended from pirates -- hot-blooded and --”_

_“And what would you know about that?” Merry asked, pretending jealousy and pulling away from him. “Fine way you’ve got of showing you care, Caleb Brewster, singing about other girls.”_

_“What! No others, Merry. Just you.”_

_She rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you say that to all of them.”_

_“Never!” he declared stoutly, pulling her close to him. “Well, only the pretty ones.” She gave him another good smack for that, and he responded by tightening his arms around her waist and shaking her a bit, growling and laughing at the same time while she made a show of struggling, ._

_“Is it really going to be two years, Caleb?”_

_“Aye. Two years of try-pots and smoke and bad food and open water. And never a girl in sight.”_

_“But there’s plenty of girls between here and York City,” Merry accused. “Some of them Spanish, too, I’m sure.”_

_“But none of them waiting just for me.”_

_“Who says I’m waiting for you?” Merry asked lightly, wondering what he would say to that._

_“That grin you’re wearing,  for starters,” Caleb said with a grin of his own. And she could not lie to him about that._

 

After that point the memory was all heavy warm hands and the prickle of straw against her petticoats, and a series of long kisses that ended only when her father’s voice, urgent and anxious, interrupted them and bade them put away their plans for another time.

 

That had been the first time he’d gone away -- two years, on his second voyage -- and it had certainly not been his last. As for the last...well, she remembered well enough what happened before the last. There had been no barns and no singing and no Caleb for a long, long while after that.

 

_Now let ev'ry man drink off his full bumper,_

_And let ev'ry man drink off his full glass;_

_We'll drink and be jolly and drown melancholy,_

_And here's to the health of each true-hearted lass._

 

The song continued to spin in her head, even as the boat, and the man in it,  were a mere thought on the horizon.

 

Usually it would have calmed her, to watch the waves roll out into the harbor, but today every bone in her body was singing with restless joy. _He is alive! He is alive and well and that is all that matters,_ she reminded herself.

_But wouldn’t you rather he were here, and not half-way to Connecticut? Wouldn’t you rather he were singing in your ear, instead of shouting across the sound?_

  


The heavy sound of boots on the dock punctuated her thoughts with an ominous ring. _Yes - but if he were here, he wouldn’t be with me,_ she thought to herself. _He’d be locked in someone’s cellar_.

 

 _Or shot as a spy,_ another part of her mind reminded her coldly.

 

_I’d rather he were alive and far away than close and dead. I can live with that, though it pains me to do it; the alternative would pain me far worse._

 

More soldiers were joining the others already on the pier, scanning the horizon and speculating about the identity of the man who had just left in so bold a manner. Merry moved away, afraid (she did not know why) that they might somehow discover her secret if she stood too close.

 

“Miss Hayman!”

 

She was so lost in her own thoughts she hadn’t seen Anna Strong step out of her tavern -- nor move to cross her path.

 

“Did you catch our friend?” Anna asked. “It was an untimely departure.”

 

“I -- I did.” _And I am all the better for it._ “Thank you.” She meant the phrase with every fiber of her being.

 

Anna smiled. “A small favor for a friend.”

 

“Are we to be friends, Mrs. Strong?” She didn’t mean the question the way it sounded, and retreated a little, ashamed of herself for making the prospect sound unpleasant. “For … I should like the prospect very much.”

 

She recalled that had been a long time since she had seen Anna Strong smile, and she half-thought that there was something of relief in the woman’s eyes, the sort that comes after a person shares a heavy secret. _Caleb Brewster’s not the only secret you’re hiding, Anna, is it?_

 

But today was not a day for asking such questions. The two women clasped hands under a cloudless sky and silently went thier separate ways, Anna to the tavern and Merry to the long road back to her family farm. The way into town had been lonely and fraught for Merry, her mind filled more with worry and woe, but coming home she stopped for a moment and realized herself lightened, considerably, of the burden that had been on her back that morning.

 

 _I have made a new friend today,_ she realized.

  
And it made all the difference in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On Jordan's stormy banks I stand  
> And cast a wishful eye  
> To Canaan's fair and happy land,  
> Where my possessions lie.
> 
> It's a shame New Jordan, the hymn quoted above, wasn't published until the 1830s, otherwise I would try really hard to find it a place in this story. I think it's so appropriate for this story and this chapter in particular (and, in fact, to the whole of TURN.) (I particularly like this version, from Ron Jeffers' Make a Joyful Noise: American Psalmody 1770 - 1840 http://www.newworldrecords.org/media/fileivzwR.mp3
> 
> (As for Farewell and Adieu, I don't think we have to look any further than Sarah Blasko's amazing cover used on the show.)
> 
> Bible verses in the beginning of this chapter are from the KJV (Psalms 5:3-4) (Proverbs 31:10, 15) in the absence of any material regarding prayer books from the period.
> 
> Ideas on women's employment, life in domestic service, and other associated female domestic stage business from LIberty's Daughters by Mary Beth Norton, and also Founding Mothers by Linda DePauw and The Way of Duty by Joy and Richard Buel. All highly recommended.
> 
> I don't know if tavernkeepers would have 'hired out' the making of their products to other people, and I'm fairly certain every farmer worth his salt, including Selah Strong, would have had an apple orchard for the domestic production of cider, but the opportunity offered by a visit from the local barkeep to trade and talk with the Deacons was too good to pass up.
> 
> Also, how cute are Martha's kids? I love writing children. 
> 
> Giving credit where credit is due, a huge shout-out in this chapter goes to *my* new friend, truth_universally_acknowledged. Every author needs a cheerleader sometimes, and she has been invaluable in pulling me out of a funk and letting me know that this story matters to someone.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The recent business of Setauket's supposed spy is making everyone in town anxious -- even farm daughters well away from the harbor and the soldiers. But this is going to change life here, and not necessarily for the better. Judge Woodhull has his visiting jacket and his best hat on, and one of his stops is at the Hayman farm.

For the next several days there was talk of little else but the Spy. 

 

It did seem to matter that no one knew whether he was, in fact, a spy or not, but everyone was content to continue in that assumption, as Major Hewlett and the garrison were continuing to assume. Sentries were doubled, additional boats were sent out on harbor patrol, and the three young soldiers who had been on guard duty at the dock that day were given twenty lashes apeice. The Major himself could be seen pacing the churchyard, contemplating the cannon emplacements.

 

_ All this for one man, _ Merry thought to herself, glad, when she heard the news of the whippings, that she had not been there.  _ One man in a boat. _

 

Was Caleb a spy? A smuggler, yes, and a soldier, certainly, but a spy? Merry wasn’t sure what to think of that. What buisness could a spy possibly have in Setauket?  _ What happens here that a general, an army, would wish to know?  _ Could he be? Was it possible? 

 

The town gossips hemmed and hawed over and over the business, speculating on who it might have been (one of Setauket’s own, or an outsider?) and where he might have hidden himself (there were a great many searches of barns, and Find the Spy became a greatly favored new game among Setauket’s children) and who, if anyone, might have helped him in his perfidious endeavor.    
  
But by far the greatest change of all those following in the wake of Caleb’s departure was the sudden arrival of Judge Woodhull, pressed and polished and hat in hand, at several people’s homes. The Scudders, the Outerbridges -- and, surprisingly, the Haymans.

 

“Merry!” Mrs. Fielding appeared at the kitchen door and tried, without being seen to shout, to get Merry’s attention over the quick, methodical beat of Merry’s paddle on the worst of the week’s laundry. “Merriment Hayman!”

 

Merry looked up from the shirt she was working on and quickly followed Mrs. Fielding’s gesturing hands (never a good sign, ladies did not _gesticulate_ _wildly_ , she had learned that as a girl) up to the kitchen door and back inside the house. _Is something burning? Have I forgotten some holiday? Or to clean something?_

 

But that did not seem to be the case. Mrs. Fielding was looking her over with a hasty eye. “That cap will do, once you fix your hair, I’ve brought your mother’s glass down-- and here’s a clean apron.”

 

“Mrs. Fielding, what --”

 

“Judge Woodhull is in the parlor with your parents!” Mrs. Fielding said this as though Judge Woodhull might be synonymous with God Almighty, or his Royal Highness King George of England -- a person deserving of every courtesy and respect and accommodation the house could produce. Including, obviously, the daughter of the house to serve tea. For it would be tea -- Merry caught the smell of Bohea rising from the pot on the table while Mrs. Fielding tucked all her flyaways back underneath her cap and tied on a fresh apron. A luxury Merry hardly allowed herself now, preferring the dried herbs from her garden that she’d gotten so used to drinking in place of the Lapsangs and Gunpowders of earlier days. But to not serve it -- and to the magistrate, no less -- looked a little like treason.

 

Mrs. Fielding looked her over once more, seemed to find her fit, and sent her forth with the tea tray, laden with four cups, the pot of tea, and a plate of yesterday’s gingerbread sliced fine for good measure. Merry felt suddenly anxious about the state of her hands, red and angry from the morning’s washing, and gripped the tray tighter, taking one final breath and going as silently as she could into the parlor.

 

All three of them looked up when she entered, her father in evident gratitude, her mother in polite interest and Judge Woodhull in what could only be described as pleasant surprise. “Miss Hayman! I wondered if we might have the honor of seeing you this morning.”

 

“You must forgive me, Judge Woodhull, I was...occupied, when you arrived.” Merry said apologetically, wondering if it was quite polite to mention the business of laundry in front of such a distinguished guest. (Guests didn’t usually just drop by in the middle of the morning! Guests came during the afternoon when the heavy work was done. But maybe that wasn’t so in the Judge’s world, where women merely superintended servants.) 

 

“You should be proud of having raised such an industrious daughter,” Judge Woodhull said with one of his usual smiles, taking the cup from Merry’s hands and nodding his thanks.

 

“We are very proud of all that Merriment does,” her father said, as graciously as he could,  sitting uneasily in his chair and doubtless also thinking about the work he should have been doing instead of chatting in the parlor with his wife and their esteemed guest.

 

“Young Mrs. Woodhull was just speaking the other day of you, Miss Hayman. She much regretted she did not speak to you more at the dinner, and wished she might see more of you,” The Judge went on.  _  Why should Mary Woodhull want to see more of me? We’ve little enough in common.   _ “She intends to start our butchering next week, at Whitehall.”

 

“You must have a deal of it to do,” Merry responded, unsure of what to say.  _ A good deal more than my father does, at any rate, for all that your farm’s about five times the size of ours. _

 

“Indeed,” the Judge agreed, studying his cup and waiting for his tea to cool. “Much more than I think it right to let her handle alone. It is such a chore, and requires an experienced hand. One much like yours, I expect.”

 

“Merry has always handled our butchering,” Her mother said, a surprising interjection coming from her. “She has a good eye for household economies.”

 

_ Mama, have you forgotten Judge Woodhull only has one son, and him already married? _ Merry wondered privately.  _ You needn’t speak of me as though I were a maid you were bartering off in marriage.  _

 

But Judge Woodhull seemed prepared to overlook  the strangeness of Mrs. Hayman’s comment. “Would that all matrons could hear such praise,” he said with an easy smile. “Still, Mrs. Woodhull is young yet, and has much to learn in the way of ...household economies, as you say. The only thing she lacks for it are teachers.” He let this sit a while and then, (as if he had just thought of it) continued. “Perhaps, Mrs. Hayman, I might prevail upon Miss Hayman to come to Whitehall and help young Mrs. Woodhull. She would be glad of the company, and we would be happy to ...share the fruits of thier labors.”

 

“Merry?” her father asked, expectant, from his chair. “Have you any thoughts upon the matter? Since it is your work we speak of.”

 

Merry looked anxiously from her father to Judge Woodhull, still smiling that strange, unreadable expression of his.  _ What does he really want? It can’t be this that he’s come all the way here for.  _  “I would be happy to help Mrs. Woodhull,” she found herself saying. “Let her name the day, and I will come.”  _ What other answer can I give you, while you sit in state in our drawing room, and I serve you? _

 

“Splendid,” the Judge said, pleased with himself, finally sipping his tea. His smile pronounced it very drinkable, though that did not seem to help the rest of the room.

 

“I hope young Mrs. Woodhull didn’t send you all the way simply to ask for Merriment’s help,” her father supplied, still sitting, a little anxious, in his chair.

 

“No. No, she did not.” See, now, there was a little of the easy-going smile gone, a little of the casual grace shed! Richard Woodhull’s face finally looked as ill at ease as her father’s did. “You will have heard there was some trouble in the harbor this week. Major Hewlett thinks we may have spies in our midst, and deems the town vulnerable to attack.”

 

“And he thinks the man hid here?” Amos asked, reaching over to take his wife’s hand, lest the news distress her too terribly.

 

“No,” the judge assured them, nearly upsetting his teacup in his haste to respond. “Hardly anything like that. Major Hewlett knows your family to be one of great integrity and patriotism, Mr. Hayman -- indeed, he quite depends upon it. In fact he -- that is to say, I -- “ It was the first time Merry had ever seen Judge Woodhull out of tongue. He stopped himself, took a breath, and reconsidered. “He has plans to fortify the churchyard from further attack.”

 

“If he has need of a man to help with dry-stoning a wall, i should be happy to help him,” Amos said generously. “ I have a length of fence in my south pasture that can be used, if he will but cart the stone--”

 

“I’m afraid his engineer has other ideas,” Woodhull said plainly. “His thoughts ran ….to the churchyard.”

 

Merry tried not to turn too quickly towards her mother, afraid of what she might see on Rebecca Hayman’s face. The church yard as a source for stone. Gravestones.  _ And there are plenty there that bear the name of Hayman.  _ Not new stones, now -- the last was laid when Merry was close on twelve, and she was past twenty five now. All those little coffins, and the inscriptions above them.  _ Sacred to the memory of Charity Hayman, Born February 7th, 1752, Departed this life January 18th, 1753, aged eleven months.  _ She used to visit them with her mother, the line growing longer with each passing year until her mother could not bear to come at all.  The last had not even been given a separate stone, merely added on to Henry’s, and buried above him: _ Also Baby Hayman, departed life June 29th, 1762.  _ A life too short to offer much description -- though she still saw that little blue face sometimes, in her dreams, the one that had peeked out of the blanket before the midwife took it away. Sometimes she had passed them with her father, on their way to church, when they had still attended services with Reverend Tallmadge. Often he would stop and pray, though whether it was for his children under the earth or his wife still upon it Merry never knew, or thought to ask. Perhaps he prayed for her -- but she rather doubted that.

 

Her father’s face was half in agony watching her mother. And her mother -- her mother was curiously silent, wearing that same, faded expression she always did, quietly considering Judge Woodhull’s request. “Will they use the children’s stones?” She asked, no hint of shock or alarm in her quiet voice, a simple, earnest request for information. 

 

It became clear to Merry in that moment that Richard Woodhull had not thought  _ his _ request through before coming, or else thought that he would be asking her father alone, and not his wife. But hearing the question he had come to ask, but could not ask outright without sounding cruel, from the woman who stood to lose the most by the answer he wanted to hear, seemed to beggar him. “He...has asked that I ask the families, first,” he said, and Merry got, for the first time ever, a strong sense of shame in the magistrate’s voice.

 

“Ask, rather than take them by force, you mean,” Amos said, with a bitterness Merry had never heard before. “To be used for what?”

 

“There is a need to shield the gun crews, when the cannon are mounted higher,” the Judge said, swallowing as nervously as if he had been the one to fire the first ball. “But I have asked already not to use the stones of children,” he added, as if that would be some comfort, “Nor those of women, nor the town fathers.”

 

“What, so that my father, my grandfather, my elder brother can all be subject to this...this...sacrilege, this vandalism? I am sorry, Judge, but this is --” 

 

“Let him have one.”

 

All eyes in the room leapt to Mrs. Hayman, steady and pale in her chair. Amos looked down at his wife with gentle concern, not sure he was hearing her correctly.

 

“Rebecca --”

 

“My children could not help him in life, Amos -- let them serve their king as they should have.” 

 

“But Becca, which?” Her father’s voice dropped, so low that even Merry almost did not hear. “Did you love any of them less?”

 

“Let him take Joseph’s. He would have been old enough to fight.” 

 

Her father’s voice was indescribably sad. “Becca.”

 

“You shall have one stone, Judge Woodhull,” Rebecca Hayman decided, fixing the magistrate with a clear, direct stare. “Major Hewlett will have my Joseph.”

 

She might as well have been saying that the army could take a living son from her, and suddenly, Merry found herself  _ angry.  _ Angry that her mother had not cried, shouted, screamed for mercy, angry that she had acquiesced and given in without a fight. At least her father had made his opinion known! She knew by now she should have been used to it, but this -- this was as fresh to her as the first time she had realized her mother’s apathy.

 

Her siblings had become, in the intervening years since their departures, little more than the stones on which their names were writ. They had no other form to her. She had been content to ignore them, for the most part, feeling no absence where there had been but little presence. But now, to take one of them, to take  _ her brother _ , and place him where he might be shot, shattered, maimed beyond all recognition, drove her wild with rage.  _ Why did you not fight for us, Mother? For any of us? If he were here, a man of twenty three whom you had nurtured and watched grow tall, would you let him go so easily to follow a drum?  _

 

_ Or would he already  be off with Ben and Samuel Tallmadge, and wear a coat of blue instead of red? _

 

_ Do you truly not care for any of us? _

 

She did not trust herself to say anything, did not even trust herself to rise and fill the Judge’s now-empty cup, fearing she would find herself pouring hot tea on his hands just to make him hurt the way she was hurting now.  She was not even reasonably sure her face did not already say everything she wished to say.

 

“Mrs. Hayman, that is more than generous.”

 

“You have given Thomas, Judge,” she reassured him. “I will give my Joseph.”

 

The Judge’s face ran suddenly white, his jaw tight. A sudden clarity of thought came on like lightning, and Merry wanted to snarl at him.  _ He wouldn’t have given his own son’s stone,  _ she realized, one hand a hard, determined fist in her lap, her nails cutting crescents in her palm.  _ He wouldn’t do himself what he has asked of us. And my mother, who does not even have the consolation of her child’s memory, will give up the only way he’ll be remembered. _

 

“I’ll....tell the Major he may use Joseph’s stone,” Richard Woodhull said, rising from his chair. “I hope he will look down kindly on it.”

 

“He was a good boy who knew his duty,” Becca said, almost to herself.  _ He was a little boy of two with golden hair,  _ Merry wanted to shout.  _ He knew no more of duty than a pig of flying. I was but five myself, but I remember that. _

 

“I’ll show myself out,” the Judge said quietly, taking his hat from where he’d laid it on the table.

 

“Merry, show Judge Woodhull the door.” Her father’s voice was flat, and Merry struggled not to to let her anger get the better of her as she found her feet and lead the way back out into the hall. The judge’s hat was still in his hands, turning nervously, and he looked as though he wished to say something to Merry, but thought the better of it, stepping silently through the door and then turning back to bow to her in parting, fixing his hat on firmly. Merry shut the door behind him and stared at the grain of the wood for a moment, her lip trembling, before sending the side of her fist heavily into the door. A shelf on the wall rattled. 

 

“Merry?”

 

“It’s fine,” she choked out. “I...just…It’s fine.” She considered the door again, and the pain in the side of her hand. “I’m going back to the laundry,” she managed, practically flying back out the kitchen door and into the kitchen yard.

 

Laundry be damned. She had no patience for it now. She wanted to run, wail, cry, scream -- to beat her hands into someone’s chest and be wrapped up in their arms and be consoled. She wanted Caleb -- but Caleb wasn’t here, Caleb was the whole reason this mess had started, without him they wouldn’t be here, and she wouldn’t be wavering between crying in anger and crying in desolate want. 

 

Was there a word for when the heart felt torn between love and hate?

 

She took the gate from the kitchen garden out to the woods beyond, strides long and confident, rustling leaves as she went.  Anything to put distance between her and that house. The air was crisp and clear, and the cold calmed her, a little, the silence as heavy as a cloak. She could feel her heart beating restlessly at her stays, her pulse throbbing at her throat. In the woods ahead a bird called. She  did not stop to note it.

 

She little noted the distance she walked, too blind with anger to notice until she noticed the the light had changed, the ground underfoot now bare of leaves. She’d walked clear through the woods. Catching her breath, she spied a fallen log near the forest’s edge and sat down, trying to get her bearings. She was at the back of someone’s fields, that much was clear -- but the house was too far off to get a good sense of where she was.

 

“Miss Hayman!” She looked up towards the sound of her name, and the lone figure approaching from across the field - a man, smaller in stature, with a dark coat and brown hair, and a -- a young face, that smiled in his apologetic way to see her.

 

She did not even try to keep a civil tone in her voice. “Mr. Woodhull.”  _ The very man I don’t wish to see. _

 

Abraham Woodhull caught the anger in her voice easily enough, and kept his distance, stopping a few steps short of her log, any smile he might have had before fading from his face. “I think my father's been to see you, then.”  _ At least  _ **_he_ ** _ recognizes how serious this proposition of his father’s is. He understands. _

 

“He has.”

 

“And has your father given him what he asked for?” His voice was still cautious, afraid of what she’d say.

 

“No,” Merry managed, sniffling in the cold and wiping a spare tear from the corner of her eye, wishing she’d picked a log a little more out of the wind. “My mother did.”

 

“Oh.” His face fell. “I had ...hoped he might see reason if he heard it from enough people.”

She looked at him, confused and angered. “Has he gone mad?” she asked baldly.  This was not a time for social niceties -- Major Hewlett had dispensed with those, in her mind. “Gravestones? Is that truly his only option?”

 

“I’ve asked,” he said plainly.  _ Well, you didn’t ask hard enough, then,  _ Merry wanted to say, but remained silent. “He seems to think this is the only course left to him.  I told him it would come to nothing, I told him…” his voice was rising now, and, realizing it, he tapered off, recovered himself. “Major Hewlett has declared it needful, and what the Major asks for, he receives. My father denies him nothing. And  _ he _ talks of spoiled children.” The way Abraham spat ‘he’ made Merry wonder if it was Richard Woodhull or the Major when he spoke. He took a breath and sighed, glancing in the direction of the village and the harbor. “All this for one man.”

 

“Do you know who it is?” The question slipped out before she could rein in her tongue, and Woodhull turned to her, his eyes unforgiving.

 

“I think  _ you _ do, Miss Hayman, if we are being plain,” he accused quietly, his eyes fixed on hers.  Was that her heart again, beating as loud as a loose sail in the wind? Could he hear it?  Would the wind hide how her cheeks raced scarlet? “You were in town that morning.”

 

The anger had cleansed her, made her stronger, somehow, and she looked at him the same quiet accusation.   _ If I must burn,  _  she thought,  _ set me aflame here where I sit.  _ “I was, and … I do. ” It seemed, saying it aloud, that a terrible burden had been lifted from her shoulders, however dangerous that burden seemed.  _ And what will you do with me for it? Will you tell your father? Or the Major?  _

 

_ For if I read you right they seem no friends to you, Abraham Woodhull.  _

 

“I thought you might." His face softened. "He meant to stop, to see you. I spoke with him, the night before. But he was delayed, and he had no time. His errand was an urgent one.”

 

_ His errand!  _ “So the Major is right -- there was a spy on Setauket.”  _ Oh, Caleb, why must you do these things to me?  _

 

“No,” Abe reassured her. “ _ Caleb _ is not a spy.” Her heart slowed to hear it, but at the same turn...the way he said...did that mean there was someone else? She could not think on it further, he was still talking. “Merely a....a messenger. A courier. But we are not in danger here. General Washington has bigger problems than the backwaters of Long Island.” He pulled himself up short again, aware that he was rambling, and, perhaps worse still, that he was speaking of something he shouldn’t. 

 

“You'll find I'm not out of practice when it comes to keeping secrets, Mr. Woodhull,” Merry reassured him, watching his shoulders relax, his face lose a little of its wide-eyed fear.  _ I kept the boy I hoped for a secret until he became a man, and now I keep him secret still. _

 

The anxiety in Abraham’s face had softened again. “He did wish to stop, Miss Hayman. He asks of no one else when I see him.”

 

Not of his family -- his uncle, his sister?  _ Oh, Caleb. _ “What do you tell him?”  So many questions!  _ And when do you see him? And why? And why do you tell me this? Why now?  _ She tried not to be too overbearing, and pressed the rest of the questions back unasked.

 

Abraham shrugged. “That you're well, that your family's well. That I don't see much of you, truthfully.” He scuffled the toe of his shoe in the dirt, studying the line it made.  _ He’d rather we didn’t speak of it. Well, that’s fair enough. I’m not sure I wish to, either. _

 

“You are a busy man, Mr. Woodhull. It is excusable.”  _ I’ve little enough to report to him myself. He’d care little for the cidering, and the spinning, and the mending.  _ Merry searched for something else to say, feeling that there was something she had wanted to speak to him about, something that had little to do with Caleb, or spies, or gravestones. Oh, yes. Mary’s invitation. She’d nearly forgotten about it. “Your father mentioned, this morning, that Mary is to start her butchering soon.”

 

That brought his eyes up, and a frown to go with them. “My father's butchering, but yes.”

 

“He asked that I come to help her with it. I imagine it is a big job, even with your father's slaves.”

 

Well, that was of interest. “She's probably right to ask. She comes from a...a smaller home than Whitehall. The supervision of servants is a little outside her realm. Though she likes to pretend otherwise. Play the great lady.” His disdain was evident, and it made Merry, thinking again about the dinner party and their conversation by the fireplace on duty, wonder about something, something that she knew Setauket gossip had long speculated on.

 

“Why did you marry her, Mr. Woodhull?”

 

Whatever question he might have been expecting, that wasn’t it. He struggled a moment, squinting a little, as if there were some book in front of him from which he might read the answer, some predetermined text that he could quote at length. It did not seem he found it. “There was a...a contract,” he said finally, shrugging with an air of futility. “I did not want to break it.”

 

_ So he had a sense of duty, once. And has it still, I suppose. _  “And your contract with Anna? Was there nothing sacred in that? It was no secret you two wished to marry. No one would have given a second thought if you’d... packed your brother’s bride back to her parents.”

 

“Sometimes we have to do things we don’t like. Give up people we love.” His eyes met hers, smiling a little. “I didn’t think I’d have to tell you that.”

 

She felt herself wince. “That was different.”

 

“Was it?” His eyes met hers, brimming with  unsaid words.   _Both of us could tell a tale about a father who disdained our choices, seeking better things for us, about giving in to their demands and the pain that followed. Both of us could lecture long on filial duty, and its various effects - drowned hopes, lost love, scattered dreams._ For a while neither said anything, their eyes in silent communion. “I should let you get  home.” He said finally, glancing over to his farmhouse, across the fields.

 

“I think I'll stay a while longer, if you don’t mind. I don't trust myself to be civil just yet.”

 

He snorted at that, and smiled. “Have you anything you'd like me to tell Caleb, if I see him?”

 

She considered this a moment, studying the backs of her hands -- still chapped from the washing, and made worse by the wind.  Inelegant hands. Not a fine lady’s hands like Mary Woodhull’s, white and neat with perfect, smooth nails. Working hands. A farmwife’s hands. “Tell him I'm well. That I don't want him to worry.”  _ He’s not the worrying kind, but he knows I am. _

 

“I’ll do that, Miss Hayman.”

 

And then he was gone, walking back over the fields to his barn and house. Was that Mary she saw in the doorway, with her white cap and apron? There seemed no one else it could be, she had no hired kitchen help. Would she be jealous, seeing another woman talking to her husband in the fields? Would she be afraid?

 

_ She might be, knowing what she knows of Anna Strong.  _

 

What was it Abraham had said about Mary?  _ She comes from a smaller home than Whitehall. She likes to play the great lady. _

 

What must it have been like to be Mary Woodhull, growing up in town, in a comfortable house like the... the Scudders, and then coming here, to marry a man you didn’t know,  seeing his house, his family, and putting down your hopes for such a life -- only to find yourself married to his younger brother and  spirited away to a lonely farm without even the company of a servant for consolation? Merry had lived her whole life in such a manner, content with her small social circle, but what had Mary Woodhull known?

 

Suddenly the prospect of helping her with the butchering seemed of greater consequence.

 

The walk back home was colder now, the heat that had come with her anger all but spent, her body feeling the air more keenly now. The laundry lay forgotten in the yard, the fire under the copper burned down to a few half-alive coals. A whole morning, wasted. She’d have to bring it up to boil again.

 

“Merriment.”

 

Her father had come out into the yard,  coat rumpled and faded, a few stray pieces of hay still clinging to his breeches. He must have been waiting for her in the barn -- or doing a little quiet reflection of his own.  How tired he looked! But then, he always seemed tired to her now.  _ My father is getting old,  _  Merry realized, her heart heavy. “Yes, Papa?”

 

He studied the print of her dress for a moment, trying to find his words. “Your mother...doesn’t see the world as we do, Merriment. We must make allowances. If this is her decision, we must abide by it.”

 

_ Oh, Papa.  _ “He’s your son, too.”  _ Or have you forgotten him as well? _

 

The look of simple patience in her father’s eyes made her want to cry. “The Judge has what he came for, and your mother is at peace with it. We’ll speak no more on it.”  _ Was that how Job looked when his children were taken from him? How Abraham looked at Isaac as they climbed the mountain? Oh, Papa, please. You don’t have to sacrifice everything you love for peace. Surely you know that as well as I. _

 

But she said none of these things, and instead nodded, not trusting herself to speak any more, and her father smiled a little, assured of her compliance. “Did you enjoy your walk?” he asked, and Merry felt herself blushing, ashamed that her father had found her out.  _ He’ll have been worrying about me. He doesn’t like me walking alone as I used to do before the soldiers came.  _ Suddenly her trip to the Woodhull’s farm,  even her anger, seemed selfish.

 

“Yes, Papa.”

 

“Good. Almanack says we’re due for a change of wind.”  _  Meaning  that it will turn cold -- cold enough not to be walking in the woods.  _ “Mrs. Fielding says she’ll handle dinner,” he added, glancing up at the kitchen window. “Since you’ve got enough work with the laundry.”

 

_ A small mercy -- at least I don’t have to talk with anyone out here.  _ Remarkably kind of Mrs. Fielding to think of her that way. She tried to smile, silently nodding in appreciation. Her father seemed to understand that, and laid his hand on her shoulder.

 

“Your mother and I love you very much, Merriment. I hope you know that.”

 

And, speech finished, he made his way back to the barn, leaving his daughter in the dooryard with her kettle and her laundry. Merry considered her work, and glanced back up at the house, imagining her mother in her chair. Was she thinking about this decision of hers as much as her husband and child were? 

  
Merry rather thought she wasn’t. _   
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of things I'm not satisfied with in this chapter -- just now realizing that Amos Hayman's apparent lack of knowledge about the town's torch and pitchforks party at Judge Woodhull's is a bit strange, but we'll simply say that it's been a hard week on the Hayman farm and he hasn't gotten a chance to go into town this week. But this was one of those chapters where it wasn't going to get any better if I stared at it more, so here it is. Mea Maxima Culpa.
> 
> Everyone who's talked with me about this show is by now aware that I am totally team Let's Give Abe a Break Already He's Trying, and this chapter speaks to that. I rather like the parallel presented by him and Merry in terms of interfering parents.
> 
> After writing a great deal of Hayman family backstory, I started reading a new book called A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812, which has been tremendously informative about the lives and social circles of women in late 18th century America. Martha Ballard lived in Maine and the diary covers the years of her life after the war, but it's still interesting and has given me a lot to think about in terms of this story. Fascinating statistics about births, deaths and marriages, very well written. Comes highly recommended by me (and the Pulitzer Prize committee.)
> 
> Reviews will be given to Merry in lieu of all the hugs she needs in this chapter.


End file.
